UNIFICATION, STABILITY AND GROWTH
From three portals to one unified ecosystem.
Universidad Católica del Maule chose Griddo to centralise content management and guarantee 100% uptime during its enrolment period, the most critical time of its year.
WHO IS UCM
A university with digital vision and strategic resolve.
Universidad Católica del Maule is one of the most prominent higher-education institutions in Chile, with a presence across multiple campuses and an academic offering spanning undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education.
For UCM, its digital presence isn't a secondary concern: it's a direct lever for recruitment, communication and institutional visibility. With that in mind, the team decided to rebuild its digital ecosystem from the ground up — and chose Griddo as the platform to build it on.
THE CHALLENGE
Four clear goals. One tight window of time.
UCM's digital ecosystem was made up of three independent portals — the institutional site, Prenovato (undergraduate) and Postgrados — each with its own management and its own infrastructure.
The communications team identified four priorities that would shape the project:
Unify the ecosystem
Managing three portals separately multiplied the editorial team's workload. UCM needed a single source of truth to control all its content.
Guarantee stability
The enrolment period brings the year's biggest traffic spike. Service continuity during those dates was non-negotiable.
Modernise the infrastructure
The existing platform needed a technology upgrade to guarantee long-term security and stability.
Improve the student experience
Help prospective students find the information they needed, exactly when they needed it, to increase acquisition and conversion.
MULTISITE MANAGEMENT
Three portals. One identity. One place to manage them all.
With Griddo as its centralised DXP, UCM unified the management of its three portals from a single platform.
The editorial team stopped duplicating publications across sites: it now works from a single source of truth, with shared workflows and brand consistency guaranteed across every environment.
Visual consistency was built from the ground up. In the project's early phases, the team designed something flexible enough to bring the three portals under one shared identity while still keeping each one distinct. The result was a single Design System — built on Griddo — that lets components and design criteria be reused across all three environments. Each portal keeps its own logo and distinctive colour palette for easy identification, while all of them share the same visual umbrella tied to UCM's identity.
UCM's 10 editors went from managing three disconnected environments to running a single, integrated digital ecosystem.
HEADLESS ARCHITECTURE · PERFORMANCE
An architecture built not to fail when it matters most.
Griddo runs as a headless platform, separating content management from the frontend.
That architecture, combined with React on the frontend, was the foundation that guaranteed the performance and stability of UCM's new ecosystem under high-demand conditions.
Griddo Media Gallery's automatic image optimization, along with all the front-end optimization scripts, plays a vital role in improving performance by reducing the workload on the operations team.
The performance gain is measurable: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — the metric that measures how long the main content takes to load — went from 3.8 seconds to 1.8 seconds. A 53% reduction that the team and visitors notice from the very first click.
2,500 concurrent visits
In 30 minutes, with 100% uptime and no incidents.
EDITORIAL TEAM AUTONOMY
UCM's team publishes with full autonomy.
With Griddo's Live Author Experience, UCM's editorial team edits and publishes content seeing exactly how it will look on the user's device, before hitting publish.
No need to involve the technical team for every update.
The Embedded Design System guarantees that every published page respects UCM's visual identity. The team is free to create and update content quickly. Brand consistency is protected by default.
Migrating 8,873 news articles and 1,433 profiles was the starting point. Keeping them updated autonomously was the real change.
ACQUISITION AND CONVERSION
From traffic to qualified lead: the score simulator.
One of the project's most strategic developments was the score simulator, designed together with UCM's academic team.
The tool lets prospective students compare their scores against the cut-off grades for the programmes they're aiming for — turning a routine query into the university's first qualified point of contact.
The simulator was designed to offer a simple, guided experience, structured in steps that make it easy to enter information all the way through to the result. To see that result, users fill in their contact details — letting UCM identify and connect with prospective students effectively. This positions the university as accessible and committed to supporting students through their academic decision.
The simulator integrates with HubSpot, so every qualified interaction feeds directly into the admissions team's acquisition pipeline.
THE PROJECT
8 months. 3 portals. 9,000 news articles. One fixed deadline.
The project ran for 8 months, from the research phase through to go-live.
The deadline was set by the academic calendar: the new platform had to be live before the enrolment period opened.
Research
Analysis of the existing digital ecosystem and definition of the migration strategy.
Design and development
A unified Design System and headless architecture with Next.js on top of Griddo.
Migration
8,873 news articles, 1,433 profiles and more than 17,000 SEO redirects.
Launch
Ecosystem live before enrolment opened. 100% uptime.
The migration included 8,873 news articles, 1,433 profiles and more than 17,000 SEO redirects to preserve the organic positioning UCM had built up. It required close collaboration between the Secuoyas team and UCM's 10 editors, who took an active role in validating and handing over the content.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
The moment of truth: 2,500 concurrent visits. Zero downtime.
The launch was a shared success. The day university enrolment opened, the new infrastructure proved its capacity: 2,500 concurrent visits in half an hour, 100% uptime, without the slightest slowdown.
Today, UCM enjoys 140% more web traffic than usual, generates leads consistently through the score simulator, and its editorial team runs all three portals from one place, with autonomy and confidence.
Unified portals
3
News articles migrated
8,873
SEO redirects
17,000+
Start to finish
8 months
Uptime during enrolment
100%
Traffic increase
+140%
Concurrent visits
2,500
We went from a shanty town webstate to the Palace of Versailles.
A PROJECT BUILT AS A TEAM
Tight collaboration.
This project was possible thanks to the collaboration between UCM's team, who brought institutional knowledge and strategic vision to every phase, and Secuoyas, a certified Griddo partner agency specialising in digital projects for higher education.
Together they proved that a transformation of this scale — in record time and with measurable results — is possible when the platform, the partner and the client are aligned.
Secuoyas is part of Griddo's partner program, a network of agencies specialising in implementing DXP solutions for universities and educational institutions.
IN ONE SENTENCE
The platform UCM chose to grow with full control.
Griddo shows why universities choose it: to publish, scale and grow without losing control of their digital ecosystem.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Everything you need to know about the UCM case.
The project was completed in 8 months.
From the research phase through to go-live, the project ran for 8 months, with a deadline set by the academic calendar: the new platform had to be live before the enrolment period opened.
LCP went from 3.8 seconds to 1.8 seconds — a 53% improvement.
The headless architecture with Next.js let the new ecosystem handle 2,500 concurrent visits in 30 minutes with 100% uptime on enrolment opening day, with no incidents.
An acquisition tool that turns traffic into qualified leads.
The simulator lets prospective students compare their scores against the cut-off grades for the programmes they're aiming for. To see the result, users enter their contact details, generating a qualified lead that feeds directly into the admissions team's acquisition pipeline via HubSpot.
UCM unified three portals into a single platform.
The institutional portal, Prenovato (undergraduate) and Postgrados moved to being managed from a single source of truth in Griddo, with a shared Design System and common workflows for the team's 10 editors.
Secuoyas was the partner behind the implementation.
Secuoyas is a certified Griddo partner agency specialising in digital projects for higher education. Together with UCM's team, they carried out the full transformation — from the Design System to migrating 8,873 news articles and more than 17,000 SEO redirects — in 8 months.
You can too
Transform your university's digital presence.
Fill in the form and the Griddo team will get back to you within 24 hours.