Summary
- ELSA's website had grown into separate, hard-to-manage versions for each country and language.
- Tokyo Techies rebuilt the entire platform from scratch, not just the design.
- The new site uses Astro, Strapi, Tailwind CSS, and AWS, and launched globally in May 2026.
- Marketers can now update content themselves, without waiting on engineers.
- The platform supports easy expansion into new languages and markets.
- Search performance has already improved since launch.
The Case
Who is ELSA?
ELSA is one of the world's leading AI-powered English learning platforms, helping millions of learners improve their English speaking confidence through personalized AI coaching. Serving individual learners, educational institutions, and enterprise customers worldwide, ELSA continuously evolves its digital experience to support a growing global audience.
As the company expanded into new markets and introduced more AI-powered offerings, its website became an increasingly important part of customer acquisition, brand positioning, and product education.
What Problem Was ELSA Facing?
Over time, ELSA built separate versions of its website for different countries and languages. Each one was managed on its own. This made sense early on, but over time the team started facing problems managing it:
- Branding looked different from market to market.
- Marketing teams had to manage the same content multiple times.
- Every update meant extra coordination across regions.
- Adding a new language meant extra engineering work.
- The design began to feel outdated as ELSA's modern, AI-driven brand evolved.
- Technical SEO issues were hurting search visibility.
ELSA didn't just need a new look. It needed a platform that could:
- Present one consistent global brand.
- Centralize content management.
- Improve technical SEO.
- Let marketers publish content on their own.
- Scale easily into new markets and languages.
How Did Tokyo Techies Approach the Project?
Tokyo Techies rebuilt the website from the ground up, with scalability as the top priority. Instead of designing each page as a one-off, the team built a modular system that could grow with ELSA's business.
Tokyo Techies owned nearly the full project, including:
- Solution architecture
- UX/UI design
- Design system creation
- Frontend and backend development
- Headless CMS implementation
- Technical SEO
- Performance optimization
- Content migration
Handling design, engineering, and content together, instead of as separate workstreams, kept everything moving in the same direction.
What Makes the New Platform Different?
A modular frontend built for speed
The team built the new site with Astro, a framework chosen for its performance and flexibility. Instead of fixed page templates, they created reusable marketing components. Marketers can now assemble new landing pages from these components with very little engineering help, which keeps design consistent and cuts down future development time.
One central CMS for all content
Using Strapi as a headless CMS, Tokyo Techies centralized content management into a single system. Marketers can now update most content themselves, using reusable content blocks, without depending on developers for every change. The CMS also supports localization, so content stays consistent across languages as ELSA expands.
Built to scale into new languages
The old site supported six languages, each built and maintained separately. The new platform launched in English and Japanese first, as a proof of the multilingual architecture. Because presentation, content, and localization are now separate layers, adding future languages will take far less engineering work.
Faster pages, stronger SEO
Using Astro's architecture and modern optimization techniques, the new site loads faster and gives ELSA a stronger technical foundation for SEO. The team also planned the information architecture and content migration carefully, to protect and improve search rankings during the switch to the new platform.
How Did Tokyo Techies Navigate Growing Project Complexity?
Large-scale digital transformation initiatives rarely progress along a straight, predictable path. As the engagement unfolded, its scope expanded well beyond the original brief, evolving from a website design into a full multi-market platform transformation. Shifting priorities and coordination across time zones demanded continuous adaptation, and Tokyo Techies also took an UX?UI design responsibilities midway through, without compromising quality.
The team sustained momentum through:
- Weekly demonstrations with stakeholders
- Proactive identification of risks before they became blockers
- Transparent communication at every stage.
This adaptability is what kept the project aligned with ELSA's long-term objectives as its scope grew.
The Results
What Results Did ELSA See?
- Improved technical SEO and stronger search performance.
- One consistent brand experience across every market.
- A scalable, multilingual architecture ready for future growth.
- Centralized content management through a modern headless CMS.
- More independence for marketers, who can now publish without developer support.
- A reusable component system that speeds up future campaigns.
- A modern tech stack that's easier to maintain going forward.
The platform also sets ELSA up to launch new languages, campaigns, and product initiatives much faster than before.
What Did ELSA Say About Working with Tokyo Techies?
" We brought Tokyo Techies in to lead a major overhaul of the ELSA website — a technically complex project involving multi-market architecture, SEO optimization across subdomains and subdirectories, full-stack development on Strapi, and coordinating stakeholders across time zones. Bennie and the team were exceptional throughout. They didn't just execute on specs — they pushed back constructively when our internal direction wasn't right, flagged risks before they became blockers, and kept the project moving even when our own infrastructure was the bottleneck. The site went live globally in May 2026, and we've already seen meaningful improvements in search performance. Tokyo Techies brought both the technical depth and the project discipline needed to pull this off. I'd recommend them to any organization running a high-stakes web build."
Will Polese, Chief Revenue Office at ELSA
What's Next for ELSA?
The new website is more than a fresh coat of paint. It's a scalable marketing platform built for ELSA's next stage of global growth. By combining solid architecture, thoughtful design, and close collaboration, Tokyo Techies turned a fragmented set of regional websites into one unified platform, stronger for ELSA's brand, easier for its marketing team, and ready for whatever comes next.
Planning a global website or platform rebuild of your own? Tokyo Techies helps growing companies turn fragmented, hard-to-manage websites into scalable, marketer-friendly platforms. If you're facing similar challenges, we'd love to exchange ideas. Feel free to reach out to the Tokyo Techies team.
