The Challenge

A Montessori Transformation: The AMS Website Overhaul

Amsive’s web development team, in collaboration with The American Montessori Society, undertook an ambitious two-year full website redesign and migration. This project encompassed over 120 web pages and 400 blog posts, bringing new life to a historic educational institution. The redesign was not superficial—it was a foundational replatforming effort with deep functional and strategic impact.

AMS needed to address declining site traffic, high page abandonment, and a disjointed user experience across diverse audience groups—parents, educators, administrators, and adult learners. The Amsive web development team set out to construct a seamless, intuitive, and engaging online experience that supports membership growth and content accessibility.

The Work

End-to-end Web Design and Development Process

When I first came to Amsive in 2023, I joined the web development team at the very beginning of taking on the American Montessori Society’s website redesign. This gave me valuable insight into the end-to-end website design process. From sitemapping and wireframing to new logo design, branding, and web designing, to development, to content entry and page assembly, to migration, linking, and quality assurance. At every step, I was able to witness and aid in the process of this complex web project.

Over the 2-year duration of the project, Amsive was able to elevate the AMS website to new heights, enhancing user experience across all user groups and making the website a clearer resource for a vital and historical educational organization.

• The website was completely replatformed, rebuilt to be 100% indexable by Google to maximize visibility.
• Amsive optimized the site for search engines, elevating content indexing and boosting organic search performance.
• Users can now access previously hidden or hard-to-find materials, from blog posts to PDFs and archives, enhancing overall engagement.
• Implemented a powerful front-end search technologies to create a powerful and reliable site search for users
• Custom membership integration allows AMS to tailor content based on user role and membership level.
• Thoughtfully designed new logo and brand guide crating a more modern and updated look while staying true to the history of the organization
• Intuitive and clean designs that allow for clear communication and site exploration
• Significant and strategic reduction in page content, intelligently consolidating resources that allow for a simpler user journey

The Results

A Strategic Redesign with Instant Results

During the course of the project, I played a vital role in:

• Page design – Using brand direction and creative skills to craft page sections and layouts that resulted in a polished presentation of information.
• Quality assurance – Leaving no stone unturned in the details; ensuring each URL links properly, finished pages match designs and defined styling, catching typos, duplicate pages, and more, all while analyzing the site from a user mindset to guarantee a seamless user experience.
• Content migration and entry – Transferring hundreds of blog posts and pages, preserving structure and integrity, and applying refreshed branding and styling to valuable user resources and client assets.
• Team collaboration – An essential contribution across nearly two years of project management, testing, and delivering.

These specific contributions are pieces of the larger puzzle that make up the new image of The American Montessori Society. Check out the website here, and see Amsive’s case study on the site for more.