Top 10 Kentico Websites for May 2015

KBC, a part of the KBC Group and one of Europe’s most recognizable financial institutions, has been providing banking services in Ireland for 40 years. They have 900+ employees in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Kilkenny, Waterford, and Kildare, and are dedicated to creating a bank where the customer comes first. The bank is not a traditional one, in the sense that they do not have branches but KBC hubs. There are no counters, just comfortable seats and booths.

The overall objective was to deliver a mobile, tablet, and a desktop-optimized consumer-facing website that puts the user first, and supports new campaigns for TV, outdoor, and print to position the bank as ‘The Bank of You’. The responsive site needed to enable users to interact with the bank, whether applying for a current account, mortgage, or answering questions, in the same easy, relaxed, and friendly manner as at the physical ‘hub’ locations.

Strata3, KBC‘s strategic web partner, challenged the standard bank web design concept and pushed the client to be bold and forward thinking. Likewise, KBC pushed Strata3 to create a website that was as flexible as possible, allowing the homepage to look different every day. The site is built on Kentico v8.1.4 with an EMS license.

Carphone Warehouse, part of the Dixons Carphone group, is one of the leading mobile phone retailers operating across Europe, while Carphone Warehouse Ireland is one of the largest retailers of its kind in the country with 92 stores nationwide.
Carphone Warehouse’s mission statement is to provide simple, impartial advice on all the phones and networks available and help customers to find the right phone for them. They proactively help their customers to get the most out of their technology and guide them through the ever increasing connected world.

The goal of the website was to empower non-tech-savvy individuals with the knowledge and confidence to buy online via the new website and, in the process, become an authoritative destination of ‘coming soon’ and latest information. The website should also encourage pre-pay website visitors to consider bill-pay alternatives, become a content hub that will be used to raise awareness offsite, and make it easy for website visitors to continue their journey offline. Ultimately, the main goal of the website was to mirror the Carphone Warehouse human in-store experience of offering honest, impartial advice to customers in the form of a modern e-commerce website.

The biggest challenge was distilling complex information into a user-friendly design that would result in an excellent user experience. This was overcome by building interactive mock–ups of the site and then observing users under various conditions.

This was a highly unique project using Kentico 8.2  with lots of customized features implemented. The build included a custom-built e-commerce module, a revolutionary checkout process, a powerful product comparison tool, and a magazine blog. Since the site went live, traffic sessions are up 4.56%, users are up 5.34%, average session duration is up 13.17%, and the percentage of new sessions is up 2.78%, versus the same period last year.

For more than 25 years, Sawgrass has been a leading manufacturer of proprietary ink and color management software, printers, and heat presses, and a provider of extensive support and education tools. Headquartered in Charleston, SC with additional offices in Basel, Switzerland, and Sheffield, England, they work with an extensive global dealer network that services more than 100 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia.  

The goals of the project were to consolidate multiple independent international websites into a single dynamic global web presence that helps support and market to their extensive global dealer network.

The primary challenge was integrating and delivering a large complex suite of products, services, and technical support documentation that had to be tailored to multiple regions, countries, and languages. Secondary challenges included API integrations and creating a tiered access client portal. Kentico 8.1 was used to overcome these challenges.

While the site launch is too recent for full stats, initial results are strong with a 36% increase in page views/sessions, a 28% increase in time on site, and a 20% decrease in bounce rate. The website included unique features such as a multilingual responsive design, a combination of culture and IP-based global regionalization, custom applications and doctypes, API integrations, and a client portal.

St John Ambulance Australia is a charitable organization dedicated to helping people in sickness, distress, suffering, or danger. Each year, St John Ambulance provides assistance to emergency services and the community in times of disaster, treats over 7,500 casualties, and delivers 60,000 first aid certificates.

St John Ambulance identified the need to enhance their online presence by redeveloping the public site and optimizing the design to attract new volunteers and donations, and promote their key messages. The organization required a simple process that would assist users in easily viewing content and browsing through 100s of products. St John strived for a solution that would have a strong focus on user experience and would continue their honorable legacy.

The St John Ambulance website is running on Kentico 8.2 and utilizes e-commerce, online forms, and responsive design, and is custom integrated with their in-house Training Management System for booking training courses.

Strata, one of the UK’s leading developers of luxury new build homes, appointed Pixelbuilders, as part of a larger team of specialists, in pursuit of their ambitions to improve their digital capacity and ability to interact with their consumers.  Responsible for the creative design, technical build, and ongoing support of the website, Pixelbuilders’ task for the website was to improve results from organic SEO, PPC, and remarketing activity, increase online visitors and lead generation, and enhance usability to encourage visitors to stay on the site longer.

The implementation of a bespoke WCF Service to determine co-ordinates from search terms and the extensive use of wildcards on particular pages proved challenging! There were a large number of high-quality images to be uploaded to the site, so as to save both time and effort, the Kentico Event Handler was leveraged.

Strata was built using Kentico 8. The use of Kentico meant that the team at Strata had the ability to update key information about developments including price, location, and specifications. The website resulted in an improved user journey, enhanced engagement with users, and increased time per user on site.

The development of the site was structured around a focal search tool with a stronger focus on redefined branding, design, navigation, and the integration of Salesforce. This web2lead plugin allowed Strata to push and pull through key sales information allowing for more leads to be followed up by the sales team and more opportunities taken advantage of. It was also important that the site was made responsive to accommodate the growing number of ‘on-the-go’ users.

Jeans for Genes is the iconic fundraising campaign of the Children’s Medical Research Institute. Each year, Australians unite by wearing their favorite jeans, outdoing each other with crazy denim outfits, and donating money or purchasing merchandise to support genetic research.

The goal was to create a website that represents the quality of the campaign leading to increased brand awareness and attracting more registrants and donations. By allowing individuals, schools, and businesses to create their own fundraising pages, and inviting others to donate to them, a new record has been set for the number of registrations at this stage in the campaign.

The site was developed on Kentico EMS allowing for the implementation of A/B testing, as well as automating follow-up emails using Marketing Automation to keep registrants engaged. The leaderboard of donators creates an air of competition leading to higher donations, but it’s the real life stories coming out of the user generated fundraising pages that really make the site exciting and powerful.

The Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET) is a professional organization for technicians and technologists in the Province of Alberta and the Canadian Territories. ASET membership consists of over 18,000 individuals, including full-time technology students, recent graduates, and fully certified members.
 
ASET needed a modern, user-friendly, mobile-friendly design to retain more of their users visiting the site and to attract more members and increase membership signup. In addition, ASET wanted its members to log in and view a personalized experience, showing the user content (events, news, etc.) relevant to their chapter and membership type.  

The ASET website’s enormous amount of pages and data created major usability challenges. Using various exercises, a simple sitemap design and innovative navigation structure were created that required an average of no more than two clicks before the user found the information they were seeking from anywhere on the site.

The second challenge was how to display the large amount of information and information types available on the site. A “recipe card system” was created that allowed information types to be visually demarcated from each other, and information that is important to the user is then emphasized.

The site was developed using Kentico 8.1. A large portion of the content is repeated throughout the site, for example, events, news, job board, and volunteer listings. Kentico’s custom page types and transformations were used extensively to create a system that made it easy for editors to add content and display the content attractively on the website in different formats.

A large increase in traffic was noticed immediately after the site launch. In addition, a high number of member logins and return visits shows that members are enjoying the new personalized content format.

Dollarwise Oil delivers discount home heating oil for its residential and commercial customers via an on-demand model.

Dollarwise‘s goals were to create a compelling, easy-to-use online shopping experience that would convey brand trust and allow users to buy oil more efficiently.  They wanted more users converting online, and a platform put in place to proactively market to these users.

There was a clear need for a re-branding of the company as the original Dollarwise site was built in a way that was not mobile friendly and the brand image didn’t convey the kind of trust and quality that Dollarwise offered the market. The website was prone to error and ultimately drove more people to call the support center to place the orders than to convert fully online.
 
Using Kentico 8.1 EMS, an integration with their proprietary fulfillment system was built. Also, very specific and complicated business rules were implemented that protected properties from overfilling, limited the company’s exposure to liability by detecting when an oil tank needed to be inspected for safety, adhered to local and state regulations, and honored guaranteed pricing for a specific window. The site is responsive and is customized to send out shopping cart abandonment emails that pull critical information from the fulfillment system to facilitate the abandonment flow in real time.

A month after launching, Dollarwise saw a 21% increase in web sessions and 18% more gallons sold. Also, using the EMS to send promotional emails, a 78% spike in web orders was tracked from one email alone.

MSP, headquartered in Enschede, the Netherlands, already operated as a distributor of genuine motorcycle spare parts selling to motorcycle dealerships in Europe. In 2012, MSP came up with the idea to create a single source that consumers could turn to for ordering motorcycle spare parts with ease, via the web.

The goal of the website was to make it easy for motorcycle owners to order the right spare parts for their bike.

The biggest challenge faced was integrating three components into a single e-commerce solution; an interactive visual catalogue and Product Information Management System, the company’s ERP for invoicing and order handling, and Kentico’s Content Management System.

The website was initially built on Kentico 7 but is now running on Kentico 8.1. Kentico’s e-commerce components were used extensively in the website design. Consumers now have a fully adaptive website where they can use both a spare part serial number and a visually appealing search functionality to order the right part in a matter of minutes.

Destination British Columbia (BC) works collectively with tourism stakeholders throughout the province to help travel-trade stakeholders, investors, and tourism business owners to market British Columbia as a tourist destination.

The goal of the website was to create a content-rich microsite that would present the province of BC as a whole – rainforest, cities, and mountains. Changing the way content was presented, Destination BC planned to strike a chord with travelers by creating the BC experience for them before they arrived.

The main challenge faced was having to collaborate with five different agencies on the project, and complete the project in just eight weeks, from start to finish.

Wildwithin.ca, built on Kentico 8.2, launched on May 4, 2015, and within the first month the website received over 54K visits, with the feature video getting over 630 views per day. The build took advantage of Kentico’s capabilities, with the website being fully responsive and integrated with social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more.