Unify Athletes — Student-Athlete Recruitment Platform & Marketing Website.

Challenge & Context

🧩 The main challenge was building a digital product that needed to work for two different audiences at once: student-athletes looking for their next step abroad, and universities wanting access to a growing network of talent. The public site speaks to both sides, with one part focused on athlete signup and profile creation, and another aimed at universities that want to showcase their programs, scholarships, and sporting opportunities. 🌐 That meant the project could not be treated as a simple brochure site. It needed a clear public-facing layer for trust, explanation, and lead generation, while also requiring a more robust application layer for profile-based workflows, platform interactions, and future growth. The public site’s emphasis on sign-up, direct contact, and discovery calls strongly suggests that this was a workflow-driven product rather than a static informational site. This is an inference from the site structure and calls to action.

Approach & Architecture

🏗️ Our approach was to separate the project into two complementary layers: WordPress for the main marketing website, content management, public messaging, and conversion pages Symfony application for the platform experience, where structured user flows, athlete profiles, and deeper application logic could live This architecture made sense because the public website needed to be easy to update and marketing-friendly, while the application needed a stronger framework for custom platform behavior and long-term scalability. 🧠 On the information side, the website was shaped around the main user journey visible on the live site: learn about the opportunity, sign up, create a free profile, connect with university teams, and move toward studying and competing overseas. The site also includes sections for About, Founder, News, FAQ, Contact, and athlete/university calls to action, which supports that conversion-oriented structure.

Technology Stack