Background Stepping Stone School has been teaching Central Texas kids since 1979. It’s family-owned and privately operated, and runs 20 campuses for children from six weeks old through school age. Its whole-child curriculum was built in-house over more than 45 years, and it has won Austin’s best childcare award for years running.
Stepping Stone School
Twenty campuses, one clear path to schedule a tour
Overview
Background
Problem
The last full redesign was nine years old, and it showed. Search visibility was climbing, but too few families who landed on the site took the next step. The site didn’t explain what makes Stepping Stone different from the national chains: long-tenured teachers, serious safety standards, a curriculum built in-house. Finding the right campus took too much work. Tour requests also ran through a separate system, so it was hard to tell which visits turned into enrolled families.
Solution
We redesigned and rebuilt steppingstoneschool.com on WordPress, hosted on WP Engine, around one goal: help more families book a tour. The new homepage leads with what parents want to know first, including credibility stats, the founder’s story and clear differences between programs. Find a School gets families to the right campus fast. Each campus has its own tour and enrollment flow connected to the Playground CRM, so families stay on the Stepping Stone site and every request can be measured.
Twenty campuses, one system that scales
Choosing childcare is one of the most emotional decisions a family makes. Parents comparing schools want proof before they’ll book a visit. Stepping Stone had plenty of proof, but the old site hid it. We rebuilt the homepage to answer the questions a parent is quietly asking. Is it safe? Will the teachers still be here next year? Why this school and not the big chain down the road? Credibility stats sit up front. The parent-voted awards and the independent PALS literacy results each get their own space, so they read as two separate wins. The founder’s story and a nod to Crestview, the original campus, show that a real family has run this school for decades. We designed every page to match or beat national competitors like Primrose and Goddard while keeping the warmth that makes Stepping Stone feel like a community, not a franchise.
A family looking for childcare doesn’t start with a brand. They start with “what’s close to me?” So Find a School opens on a list view with a photo of every campus, plus an optional map and simple location search. Every campus page is built from reusable blocks, so each school can show its own programs, photos and news without new code. Tour and enrollment links go to simple landing pages with no navigation, so families aren’t distracted on the way to the form and every request is tracked. The same templates power the paid ad campaigns that launched alongside the site. We set up tracking for phone calls, email clicks and tour forms before launch, so the team can see what actually fills seats. WordPress patterns let Stepping Stone build new landing pages on its own as enrollment priorities change.
