Top 10 Kentico Websites for July 2015

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Our partners have been working on some very impressive websites this month encompassing fields from financial and tax services, through art galleries to children’s books, and almost every place in between. Can’t wait to see what you will have been up to this time next month!

Implemented by BizStream
USA
Kentico Gold Partner

BDO is a professional services firm providing assurance, tax, financial advisory, and consulting services to privately held and publicly traded companies and is the U.S. member firm of the BDO global network which spans more than 152 countries worldwide. They serve clients through 63 offices and more than 450 independent alliance firm locations nationwide.
The new Kentico platform is central to the firm’s marketing strategies and commitment to exceptional client service. It provides an enhanced, mobile-responsive user experience, has expanded online marketing functionality, integrates with the existing CRM infrastructure, has enhanced SEO capabilities, improved security, and makes content easily searchable. In addition, it provides a potential platform for adoption by BDO member firms worldwide.
Requirements included creating a Single Sign On solution with BDO’s internal network policies, integrating content across the site including, Professionals, Services, Industries, Thought Leadership and Events, building a solution that allowed BDO’s marketing team to administrate all areas of the site, and providing event registration for the multitude of events and webinars BDO hosts. Since implementation, organic traffic has increased by 40%.

Implemented by ATOM
USA
Kentico Bronze Partner

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, also known as "The Clark", is an art museum with a large and varied collection located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the United States.
The Atom Group teamed up with the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute to create its new site. The goal was not just to showcase works of art, but create a work of art with which to showcase them. Key initiatives of the project included a complete visual overhaul, migration to Kentico CMS version 7, and integration with Counterpoint, Outbound, and eMuseum. One of the biggest challenges was importing data from the client into Kentico while maintaining their expectations.
The new Clark Art website provides a beautiful user interface that allows consumers to research easily and view the thousands of art pieces that call the Clark Art Institute home. The site also promotes its Research and Academic Programs, as well as the array of events it offers the public.
The site took nine months to complete and utilizes the Content Tree, Scheduled Tasks, Custom Smart Search Indexes, and Workflow process. The site’s content is highly dependent on the timely execution of Scheduled Tasks, so their implementation was crucial to making this website a success.
The Atom Group chose Kentico, v7.0.52 for the implementation of this site because the price-per-feature ratio was right. The client needed to be able to manage their content in an effective way, and other CMS platforms were too rigid in their capabilities. Kentico was ideal because of its template mode that allowed Atom Group to provide the client with exactly what they wanted.

 

 

Implemented by NetConstruct
United Kingdom
Kentico Gold Partner

Ryobi is a market-leading power tool manufacturer, using innovative technologies to deliver safe and efficient tools for use in the home and garden. Ryobi is a brand within the international group Techtronic Industries Co. Ltd. (TTI), a global employer of over 20,000 people with a brand portfolio including Milwaukee®, VAX®, and AEG® power tools, amongst others.
The goals of the site were to refresh the design with a fresh, new, modern, and inviting feel, while remaining a source of valuable information. The user journey needed to be clearer, easier, and more intuitive with the ability to highlight and showcase products in focus. The design should include a store locator, re-purpose the ‘Project Center’ to ‘My Ryobi’ Inspiration Center, and include a new ‘Insights’ section featuring videos and articles.
The Ryobi site is a busy international 24/7 site with huge levels of traffic. The data is constantly being updated and exchanged with the back-office systems. NetConstruct had to deploy and replace the site with the new version without disturbing the everyday operations, including numerous language sites, as well as the main UK site.
NetConstruct used Kentico 8.0 and later upgraded to 8.2 to design a single platform that would appeal to and achieve results from audiences across the UK and Europe. The upgrade was difficult due to the complexity of the site, as a whole, involving a strict and busy schedule.

Implemented by Pixelbuilders
United Kingdom
Kentico Bronze Partner

FSH is a full-service construction company offering top quality building solutions to customers across Northern England. With a strong value on customer relationships, the company is renowned for delivering a respectful and caring service. It was important that their revised digital strategy encompassed their strong brand values and worked for their client base.
The new website’s goals included the requirement for a well devised user experience for their existing and potential customer base, a clear and simple design that makes it easier for potential customers to understand the services that FSH have on offer, the implementation of a responsive design to ensure that the site is accessible across all device types and sizes, and the website would also unify the company’s rebrand and act as a platform for engaging with existing and new consumers and informing them of their strengthened brand values and new look.
Due to the amount of content on the website, pixelbuilders made use of accordions within pages to store information without cluttering the site and enhancing the user experience, and ultimately making it easier for visitors to find exactly what they are looking for on the site.
Built on Kentico version 8, the new site has seen a dramatic increase in traffic on the site, new leads generated, and an increase in mobile users. Pixelbuilders used a number of unique Kentico features including the use of maps on the contact us page to pinpoint four key locations for the business and Biz forms throughout the site in order to generate data capture points to produce leads for the business.  

Implemented by Distinction
United Kingdom
Kentico Silver Partner

Pan Macmillan UK is one of the largest book publishers in the UK. Their Macmillan Children’s Books imprint is the home to many of the country’s most popular children’s authors, including Julia Donaldson, creator of the hugely successful Gruffalo series. Pan Macmillan was named Publisher of the Year at The Bookseller Industry Awards in May 2015.
Distinction was approached to develop a new site for their Dear Zoo range of children’s books. This site was designed with young children in mind, the intention being that parents would use the site with their children, especially the Games and Activities areas of the site.
Macmillan’s team worked with research agency Mumpanel, listening and responding to the thoughts and requests of parents. The result is a simple, brand-focused website, navigated by age and stage, with regular updates on what to read next and educational benefits, as well as new resources for teachers, parents, and children. The main objective of the site was to engage with the target audience (parents and teachers) and provide a site that could be used by very young children, guided by an adult. Clearly a key goal of the site was to generate sales of the Dear Zoo range of products. Macmillan didn’t want to sell directly through the site. Instead, the objective was to refer users to the relevant partner online store, such as Amazon, Hive, and WHSmiths. They are planning to use the extensive A/B and MVT testing capabilities of Kentico EMS to enhance these calls to action. Given the target audience, Distinction and Macmillan realized that mobile optimization of the site was key. The user experience on tablets, in particular, was identified as being vital to the site’s success.
The key challenge for this project was to create a website that not only allowed Macmillan to promote their books, toys, and accessories to their target market, but also to do so in a very child-friendly way. Engaging, mobile-friendly games were considered the best way to achieve this. However, as the Dear Zoo books have an excellent educational reputation, the games needed to have an educational purpose.
Another objective of the site was to recommend other books/products through a ‘you may also like‘ section. Using Kentico’s related content functionality, site administrators can link books, activities, and other merchandise.
The site is running on Kentico EMS 8.2, and the marketing team can optimize the performance of the site using A/B and multivariate testing to try different design solutions to maximize the site’s conversion rates.

 

Implemented by Reason One
USA
Kentico Gold Partner

Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP is a leading business law firm practicing internationally from offices across Canada and in New York. Their clients include industry and business leaders in all segments of the market and at various stages in the growth of their businesses.
The goal of the website redesign was to replace the end-of-life Ektron CMS with a more contemporary CMS platform and online presence, including a responsive user interface and the introduction of digital marketing functionality.
The major challenge faced by ecentricarts was the migration of thousands of pages of structured and unstructured content from the legacy CMS to Kentico.
The site was developed with Kentico EMS 8.2, while ecentricarts developed a custom tool for content migration from Ektron to Kentico leveraging the Kentico API.

Implemented by Bluesoft
Czech Republic
Kentico Gold Partner

The CzechTourism agency, along with its offices abroad, ensures its successful presentation on the domestic and foreign markets. The Czech Tourism Authority is a contributory organization of the Ministry of Regional Development and was established in 1993. Its significant partner agencies include domestic tourist regions, cities, municipalities, and businesses.
The main goals for this site were to promote traditional regions of the Czech Republic in foreign countries, as well as in the domestic market. The website itself gives visitors unique ways to understand the traditions of the Czech Republic better.
The main challenge was to create a website that could cater for content in five different languages and ensure that everything was in the right place. Working with maps was also a big challenge because many customizations were used.
The project is running on Kentico CMS version 8.2, and the Kentico REST API is used for communication between the website and mobile application.

 

Implemented by 3 Degrees North
Australia
Kentico Silver Partner

The new reiv.com.au website is a key business system for the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, one of Australia’s peak bodies in the real estate industry. They provide real estate data to the public and services to agents in the industry. They have over 2,000 agencies as members and provide events, training, qualifications, advice, and other services to their members and the public.
The goal of the new site was to refresh the site completely, ensure it supports every device through responsive design, and provide tight integration to their back-office membership management system, iMIS. The challenge of this tight integration was met using 3DN’s “Kentico for iMIS” suite of tools, which provides a web service layer for integration to iMIS, in addition to dozens of out-of-the-box, configurable web parts that can be placed on the site. The REIV challenged 3DN with additional requirements, including the development of a new payment model commonly used in Australia called BPay, and the integration of shipping charges for products bought online calculated through back-office systems.
The site was built on Kentico 8.2 EMS. In particular, the site exploited 3DN’s web services to provide roles based on demographic data in the iMIS system, so upon login, roles available for personalization across the site include gender, age, membership status, location, and other information allowing content administrators to target content to specific types of users.  Additionally, the site makes use of Kentico E-commerce functions allowing members to buy downloadable products and have them instantly available, and predictive search allowing users to find what they need in moments. The Smart Search functions of Kentico were also leveraged to provide a directory of thousands of members that are presented on a map for radial search.

Implemented by Boston Digital
USA
Kentico Silver Partner

The Minnesota Judicial Branch is the third branch of government in the state of MN. The mission of the Judicial Branch is to provide justice through a system that assures equal access, and the fair and timely resolution of cases and controversies. Their site is the public face of the Minnesota Judicial Branch. Their previous website was very dated and had information scattered across many pages with no real organization or ownership.
New wireframes were created with 15 unique templates and several custom tables unique to the business needs. The new site also has a mobile-friendly responsive design and uses templates, custom tables, widgets, and other web parts on the website. The process was a significant organizational change due to the complete restructuring of the look and feel, site map, governance, and CMS. The site utilizes many custom forms and tables, as well as the media library.  
The site is built on Kentico 8.2.3 with the goals of promoting consistency across all pages of the new website, creating a business hub for users to be able to find information quickly and completely, combining similar information in a logical way so users don’t have to search the site for information, and creating a clean, crisp interface for easy navigation. As part of the project, the Minnesota Judicial Branch also established a governance and guidelines that are being enforced on how to add and edit content online.

 

Implemented by Adrenalin Media
Australia
Kentico Silver Partner

UNICEF is the United Nations Children's Fund. It works in 190 countries and territories with a focus on improving the lives of the most disadvantaged and excluded children.
UNICEF engaged Adrenalin Media to revamp the look and feel of their online digital presence. The goals were to engage with website visitors ultimately to make a donation or otherwise register to keep up to date on appeals that are sponsored and managed by UNICEF in assisting with disasters around the world. The website also has a secondary objective for users, to purchase virtual (inspired) gifts to send to their friends or loved ones.
The Not-for-Profit (NFP) sector is very challenging with most NFP organizations competing to attract donors. This requires UNICEF to stand out from the NFP crowd and offer a level of online engagement and interaction that sets them apart. To achieve this, Adrenalin Media worked collaboratively with the team at UNICEF Australia to understand the motivations of a website visitor to engage with them. There was also a lot of time spent in the UX phase to define the types of information a donor would be interested in to help educate them on where their money went. It was imperative that the website conveyed the emotional feelings that people in underprivileged or disaster impacted countries go through during a crisis.
Running on Kentico 8, the site, which is utilizing a responsive design, e-commerce functionality, and social media integration, has had a very positive increase in traffic, extended user sessions, and an increase in donations within the first month of release.

 

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Pavlína Mahovská

Hi, I’m the Channel Marketing Manager - currently on maternity leave. I loved to work with you. Anyway, feel free to contact my colleague, Dana Tousova, with your requests for MDF and marketing materials.

Comments

Pavlína Mahovská commented on

Hello Diana,

We will be closing next Top 10 on 15th of September, so feel free to send the information about your project(s) you believe is/are great material for Top 10 at: partners@kentico.com till then. Further information about Top 10 can also be found here: http://devnet.kentico.com/articles/is-your-website-top-10-of-the-month-material

Diana Beavon commented on

Hi Pavlina, what is the deadline for the next submissions for website of the month? Do we apply via the portal or just email you ? We've had several go live in August and have a few more due!

best wishes,

Diana (ie marketing)