In short
- Jantar serves two audiences with different languages, different urgency and different next steps, on one domain.
- The site is organized along two axes, age and language, so each visitor lands on a page written for them.
- A language switcher translates words. It does not translate intent. Each audience needs its own entry point.
One domain, two very different visitors
Picture two people typing into Google on the same afternoon. One is a mother in Split looking for an English course for her seven year old, searching in Croatian and comparing three local schools. The other is a construction worker from Nepal who needs a Croatian certificate to keep his residence permit, searching in English on a phone.
Both of them should end up on the same website. Almost nothing about what they need is the same.
That is the problem Jantar, IH Split brought to us, and the answer sits in the information architecture rather than in the design.
A family school that became an institution
Jantar was founded in Split in 1992 by Mirjana Sobin and is still family run, today led by her son Josip Sobin. It teaches more than 1,600 students of all ages, added an Institute for Adult Education in 2010, became a Cambridge exam centre, and joined the International House World Organisation network as Jantar, IH Split.
The catalog reflects thirty years of a community school growing up: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Russian, courses for preschoolers through adults, Cambridge and IELTS preparation, and Croatian as a foreign language. There's also a teacher training arm running Erasmus+ programmes for educators from across Europe.
Everything in that paragraph has to be findable by someone with a very specific need and very little patience.
What this meansThirty years of catalog is an asset only if the navigation turns it into a short list of doors.
Audience one: Split, in Croatian
The first audience is local and it's the school's foundation. Parents looking for English for a seven year old. High schoolers preparing for Cambridge. Adults who need Italian for work.
These visitors search in Croatian, compare with two other local schools, and want operational answers: which level, how many hours, which semester, how much, is there a placement test.
The site is built along two axes that answer exactly that, and the navigation shows it: courses organized by age (preschool, children, high school, adults) and pages organized by language, each one its own destination. A parent who knows the age and a professional who knows the language both land somewhere that speaks to them, rather than in a generic catalog they have to filter themselves.
Each language page carries the operational facts and closes with an FAQ handling duration, levels from A1 to C2, exam preparation and whether courses run online. The inquiry form asks the questions that make the follow up useful: which course, which language, which school year, and whether the student needs a placement test.
What this meansA local parent never meets a generic catalog. Age or language takes them straight to a page written for them.
Audience two: foreigners in Croatia, who can't read the site
The second audience arrived with the law.
Croatia had no language requirement before this. Now tens of thousands of foreign workers in tourism, construction and hospitality need a course, a test and a certificate, on a deadline that renews with their permit.
For a school with a Croatian for foreigners programme and an exam centre pedigree, that's an obligation to be findable. And here's the architecture problem in one sentence: the page selling Croatian lessons to foreigners is the one page on the site that cannot assume the visitor reads Croatian.
That's why Croatian for foreigners sits as its own destination in the language navigation rather than buried inside a general course listing. It's the bridge page: the one entry point that has to work for someone who arrived from a Google search typed in English, Nepali or Filipino, on a phone, worried about a permit renewal.
What this meansThe page that sells Croatian to foreigners is the one page that cannot be written for Croatians.
The lesson that travels beyond Croatia
Plenty of schools have this shape without noticing. A school in Rome teaching Italian to foreigners and English to Italians. A school in Cadiz teaching Spanish to visitors and English to locals. A school in Split teaching six languages to Croatians and Croatian to everyone else.
The instinct is to build one website with a language switcher and call it solved. It isn't, because a language switcher translates words. The two audiences need different entry points, different proof, different urgency, and often different next steps. One is choosing between three good options for their kid's autumn semester. The other is solving a legal deadline.
A language switcher translates words. It does not translate intent.
Get the architecture right and one domain serves both cleanly. Get it wrong and each audience wades through content written for the other, which is how schools with excellent teaching end up with websites that feel like paperwork.
If your school serves more than one audience from one website, that's usually where the enrollment leak is.
- List every audience that lands on your site and the language each one searches in
- Give each audience its own entry point in the navigation
- Write the bridge page for the visitor who cannot read the rest of the site
- Check that each inquiry form asks what that audience's follow up needs
