University of Johannesburg Website Development
One of my virtual reality clients asked me to assist them with the re design of the University of Johannesburg website. The website was out on tender, and we won the tender as...
University of Johannesburg Website Redesign Project
One of our virtual reality clients approached us to assist with the redesign of the University of Johannesburg website. The project formed part of a formal tender process, which we successfully won as part of a joint venture team.
Our responsibility focused on the full redesign and redevelopment of the university’s digital platform, including migrating the existing system from SharePoint to WordPress.
Website Migration and Custom Theme Development
We developed a fully custom WordPress theme tailored specifically for the University of Johannesburg, with a strong focus on:
- Technical SEO best practices
- Organic search optimization
- Performance and scalability
- Modern UI/UX design standards
- Long-term maintainability
The migration involved restructuring and transferring more than 20,000 pages into a new, organized content architecture designed to support future expansion and system upgrades.
Search Engine Optimization and Performance Results
The newly launched website delivered significant performance improvements. Within the first month, the site achieved:
- Over 1 million visitors in a single month for the first time in the university’s history
- A sustained increase of more than 200% in user engagement in the months following launch
- Strong organic search visibility improvements across key academic and institutional search terms
The custom-built theme and SEO structure contributed to improved rankings for terms such as:
- University
- Universities
- University of Johannesburg
- Universities in South Africa
Large-Scale Digital Transformation
This project required careful planning and execution due to its scale and complexity. The existing content ecosystem was fully restructured to ensure:
- Improved navigation and user experience
- Better indexing by search engines
- Faster load times and improved performance
- A future-proof content management structure
Letter of Recommendation
Official letter of recommendation issued for the website redesign and migration project.
Author: Gerald Ferreira