Scaling Content Operations for a Global Learning Platform: Unlocking Growth Through Strategic CMS Architecture

edX operates one of the world’s largest digital learning catalogs, serving millions of learners through professional certificates, microcredentials, and degree programs from top universities and institutions worldwide. As the platform evolved from its MOOC origins into a revenue-driving marketplace of credentialed programs, digital experience became central to competitive differentiation and learner acquisition.

The challenge wasn’t course quality or platform stability—it was operational velocity. Marketing teams couldn’t move fast enough to support growth, and the content architecture that served 1,000 courses was breaking under the weight of 4,000. For edX and parent company 2U, this represented a structural constraint on growth, not a publishing workflow problem.

When Content Architecture Becomes a Growth Limiter

edX faced a common problem for organizations operating at scale: their content and data systems were tightly coupled, creating dependencies that slowed marketing execution and limited experimentation.

Discovery Was Breaking at Scale: Thousands of courses existed in internal systems of record, but marketing pages struggled to surface the right context—audience fit, learning outcomes, format options, and credential value. Paid and organic traffic landed on pages that couldn’t adapt to query intent or learner type, creating friction in the conversion path.

Content Velocity Required Engineering: Every new program launch, campaign page, or SEO test required custom development. Editors faced a choice between rigid templates that couldn’t express program nuance or hard-coded pages that created bottlenecks with engineering. This constrained speed to market and limited the team’s ability to test, iterate, and optimize.

Platform Coupling Created Organizational Drag: Course metadata lived in proprietary databases. Marketing narratives lived elsewhere. Assembling a page required manual coordination across systems and teams. For a platform competing in an increasingly crowded eLearning market, this wasn’t a workflow issue—it was a structural constraint on growth capacity.

Building a Content Operating System for Scale

Oomph worked with edX to design and implement a content architecture that decoupled marketing execution from platform dependencies. The goal wasn’t to replace existing systems—it was to create the right separation of concerns so teams could operate independently at scale.

System Design: Oomph implemented Contentful as a central content orchestration layer, integrated with edX’s existing course databases. Course data remained authoritative in internal systems, while marketing and narrative content moved into a structured CMS. Pages were dynamically assembled using structured course metadata, modular editorial content, and reusable components governed by design system rules.

This architecture allowed edX to scale content output without duplicating data, increasing engineering dependency, or sacrificing brand consistency.

Content Governance at Scale: Oomph structured content models and component libraries to enforce design system standards while giving editors flexibility to adapt messaging by audience, channel, or campaign. Taxonomy and metadata schemas were designed to support SEO systematically rather than through manual optimization. Reusable content patterns minimized duplication across credential types and program categories.

Operational Enablement: The system was designed to shift content creation and optimization from engineering to marketing. Editors could launch program pages, build campaign landing experiences, and iterate based on performance—all without custom development. This freed engineering to focus on platform capabilities while giving marketing teams the speed and flexibility needed to support business growth.

The new content architecture fundamentally changed how edX’s marketing teams could operate:

Speed to Market: New program launches no longer required bespoke page builds or engineering sprints. Campaign landing pages could be adapted by audience segment or acquisition channel in real time. Testing and iteration became routine rather than exceptional.

Systematic SEO: Content structure improved indexability across thousands of URLs. Program-level pages could be optimized without breaking templates or creating technical debt. Internal linking, metadata, and taxonomy became consistent by design rather than through manual intervention.

Scalable Operations: Following launch, edX published approximately 1,000 new pages without additional headcount. Content creation centralized into a single system of record, eliminating duplicate workflows and reducing coordination overhead. Marketing teams gained operational independence while maintaining governance and brand standards.

Foundation for Performance: The system created a clear path for data-informed optimization. Structured content made A/B testing feasible at scale. Clear ownership and reduced dependencies positioned the team to measure, learn, and iterate on conversion performance over time.

edX transformed its content operations from project-based execution to a scalable operating model. Marketing teams gained the speed and flexibility to support growth while maintaining brand consistency and governance at scale. Engineering dependencies for routine marketing needs were eliminated, freeing technical resources for platform innovation.

For higher-ed and eLearning platforms competing on learner experience and acquisition efficiency, this represents a shift in operating model—not just a technology implementation.

As part of ongoing platform optimization, edX implemented Cloudflare image optimization to improve Core Web Vitals, reduce bandwidth consumption, and enhance performance for global users—demonstrating the kind of continuous improvement the new architecture was designed to support.

Organizations operating digital marketplaces face a common tension: growth requires speed and flexibility, but scale requires structure and governance. The answer isn’t choosing between the two—it’s designing systems that deliver both.

Oomph’s work with edX demonstrates how strategic content architecture can unlock operational capacity without adding headcount, enable marketing velocity without sacrificing brand standards, and create the foundation for data-informed optimization at scale.

This is how complex organizations move the metrics that matter: by building resilient systems that scale, adapt, and perform.