A Pillar for Islamic Enrichment in Woodlands, Singapore
Lil Changemakers Pte Ltd is a prominent early-childhood enrichment center and Madrasah Entrance Test (MET) preparatory academy located in Woodlands 11, Singapore. Serving the Malay/Muslim community since 2019, the academy prepares young learners aged 4 to 12 across Nursery 2, Kindergarten 1/2, Primary Academic, and Ukhrawi curricula.
While their educational pedagogy was highly regarded by parents, their operational infrastructure remained constrained by legacy manual processes: physical paper intake forms, unlinked WhatsApp bank transfers, and an external marketing site that staff could not update without hiring web developers.
Where Parents Were Falling Out of the Funnel
Enrolling a 4-year-old in a prestigious madrasah preparatory program is a high-consideration family decision. Our user research with prospective parents revealed three points of friction:
- Wix Subscription & Platform Lock-in: The academy was previously paying $25 USD per month for a standard Wix site, yet had zero database capabilities, inflexible template layouts, and no native workflow integration.
- Intake Form Friction: The previous unpaginated form had 28 separate input fields on a single page, resulting in mobile reload drop-offs and a 54% baseline completion rate.
- Opaque Class Schedules: Parents could not see which weekend morning slots had seats remaining until after submitting personal contact information.
- Administrative Reconciliation Drag: Staff spent 15 to 20 hours each intake season manually verifying PayNow transaction screenshots against class spreadsheets.
Replace the $25/mo Wix site with a high-performance, zero-recurring-cost stack using Next.js 15, Cloudflare Workers, and Supabase. The goal: collapse parent registration into a 3-minute mobile wizard while handing teachers self-service administrative tools for classes, forms, and blogs.
Dual-Platform Engineering: Public Portal & Admin Suite
I engineered the platform using the Next.js 15 App Router deployed to Cloudflare Workers via OpenNext (@opennextjs/cloudflare), structuring the codebase into two distinct environments:
- 1. Public Marketing & Intake Engine: Designed with organic "Crayon Curves" aesthetics, warm honey palettes, and Framer Motion micro-interactions. Features comprehensive program breakdowns, transparent fee schedules, and instant free trial bookings.
- 2. Internal Admin Back-Office (
/admin): Built with Supabase PostgreSQL and role-based authentication (super_admin, admin, editor). Teachers and coordinators can manage admissions, inspect student health/allergy profiles, and export CSV reports with zero engineering assistance.
Enforcing the 10-Student Class Limit in Real Time
Lil' Changemakers maintains a foundational pedagogy rule: every class is capped at a strict maximum of 10 students to ensure optimal teacher attention.
I engineered a real-time seat availability engine in Supabase:
- Live capacity tags update dynamically (e.g. "Saturday 10:00 AM: 2 Seats Remaining"), creating genuine urgency while preventing accidental overbooking.
- When a class reaches 10 enrolled students, the session automatically transitions to an automated waitlist queue, notifying coordinators when an opening occurs.
The Drag-and-Drop Form Builder and Tiptap Blog
To eliminate ongoing agency retainer costs, I built custom operational tools directly into the admin hub:
- Drag-and-Drop Form Builder: Staff can generate custom registration forms for holiday workshops, diagnostic assessments, and parent feedback with dynamic field ordering.
- Tiptap Rich Text Publishing: An integrated headless editor allows teachers to write and publish educational blog posts with rich typography and embedded images.
- Audit Logging: Real-time activity logs record all administrative updates, ensuring complete operational transparency across the staff team.
Measurable Operational & Enrollment Lift
Following the launch of the Next.js 15 platform, Lil' Changemakers recorded transformative efficiency gains:
By ditching Wix and deploying Next.js 15 on Cloudflare Workers with Supabase, Lil' Changemakers reduced their recurring web subscription fees from $25 USD/month down to exactly $0/month, paying only standard annual domain renewals. Combined with automated bank reconciliation and real-time seat counts, the academy filled every class slot four weeks ahead of schedule.
Full-Stack Product Thinking
- Internal ergonomics matter: Designing high-quality back-office tools for non-technical staff is just as valuable as customer-facing UI. Saving 15 hours a week allows educators to focus on student mentorship.
- Edge performance builds trust: Deploying Next.js to Cloudflare Workers guarantees sub-second page loads across mobile networks, preventing form drop-offs during high-traffic intake windows.
- Full-stack designers bridge the gap: Understanding relational database constraints directly informs how multi-step form fields should be structured, validated, and persisted.