Devon Nurseries
The Challenge.
Devon Nurseries operates five well-established nursery settings across Exeter, Exmouth and the surrounding area, with plans to grow to between seven and ten locations over the coming years. Their previous website was a single, centralised WordPress site attempting to represent every nursery at once.
This created several problems. Individual nurseries had no distinct identity online, despite each having its own character, staff, facilities and community connections. Location-specific content could not be optimised for local search, limiting visibility for parents searching by area. Parents researching a particular nursery had to navigate through group-wide corporate content before finding anything relevant to them. Nursery managers had no way to update their own site content, leaving them reliant on a central web team for even minor changes. And the existing structure was not built to support the group’s growth plans, becoming harder to manage with every new location added.
The Solution.
GSL Media designed and built a multi-site architecture on Payload CMS: a master site for group-level information, sitting alongside five (soon to be more) standalone nursery websites, each on its own domain.
The master site houses company ethos and values, a careers hub with structured job listings, and a centralised parent resource covering topics such as tax-free childcare and funded hours. It links through to every individual nursery site and carries messaging from the Head of Nurseries.
Each nursery site operates independently, with local photography, a manager’s welcome, staff profiles, a facilities and outdoor space showcase, Ofsted ratings and report highlights, local community connections, and a direct enquiry route to that nursery’s manager rather than a central inbox. A blog with category filtering lets each nursery publish location-specific updates and build local search authority over time.
Behind the scenes, every site shares the same underlying Payload structure, giving consistent security, performance and design standards across the group, while each nursery manager can be trained to manage their own content independently, without needing developer support. GSL also helped to refresh the existing colour palette, strengthening the group’s pale green into a more contemporary, visible tone, while keeping the established Devon Nurseries brand and logo intact.
The build was delivered in phases, beginning with the master site and one pilot nursery, Adventurers, before the remaining locations were rolled out. This staged approach allowed GSL to refine the template based on real feedback before applying it consistently across the full network, with it being designed from the outset to extend smoothly to future nursery locations as Devon Nurseries grows.
The Results.
As the project progresses through its phased rollout, the multi-site structure is designed to deliver:
• Distinct, locally relevant websites for every nursery, each able to be found and ranked individually in local search • Less friction for parents researching a specific setting, with relevant information immediately accessible • Independent content management for nursery managers, reducing reliance on developer support for day-to-day updates • A scalable foundation that supports Devon Nurseries’ growth plans to ten locations without the group’s web presence becoming unwieldy • A stronger, more contemporary brand presence, achieved without disrupting existing uniforms, signage or nursery-level brandingA Word From The Client
Testimonial
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I have had the pleasure of working with the GSL Media team for the past 7 months, while working on the big task of delivering 6 children’s nursery websites. Alice and the team were very easy to liaise with, with clear communication and quick resolutions to problems and queries raised during the site building process. We are very pleased with the end results: 6 brand new websites that look fresh and modern.
Imogen Slater
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