An Extra-Mile Digital Partnership for The City of Canning

As their recent rebranding project drew to a close, the council knew that rather than slapping a new coat of paint on something that didn’t quite work, they required a fresh solution that would be able to meet their needs now, and in the future.

“Integranet’s ability to quickly respond to project challenges with effective solutions was fundamental to our success.”
_{- Franko Seman Leader Digital Experience, City of Canning}

After comparing a variety of potential businesses via a tender process, our team won the project and were given the task to build a new website in Kentico EMS, and migrate all required content to the new site.

The Challenge

The existing website ran on a content management system that simply didn’t align to the City of Canning’s capacity to maintain, both in terms of staff and budget. While it offered opportunities to develop complex systems for an organisation with an in-house development team, this was not a resource available day-to-day for the council. Rather than a complex website platform, staff wanted something straightforward and easy-to-use, which could continue to grow without requiring repeated, expensive development projects.

Though the current site needed to be transitioned to Kentico, there was still plenty of content on the existing website that was worth retaining.

We transferred a stack of data all to the new website with zero errors, exposures or lost data:

• 551 web pages (and their page keywords)
• 2,085 linked documents
• 125 news items
• 30 events
• 40 dynamic document listing widget instances

This was a great opportunity for the City of Canning to examine their current website content, and streamline it to better meet their needs.

Our goal in working with the council was not only to build the new system, but help them plan their new information architecture. To do this, we needed to investigate why users were visiting the site, and how content administrators were planning to manage the information in the future.

The Solution

We determined that Kentico EMS would offer the City of Canning the functionality they needed, without the complexity of the old system. Our techsplorers then used a holistic approach to ensure the new website would meet their requirements, by considering their goals, content, branding, staff capacity and must-have features.

• A sleek home page featuring a sliding header banner and a quick-access mini-navigation panel, all of which can be customised by content administrators.
• Powerful search functionality allowing users to find relevant data quickly. A great example of this is the Waste and Recycling area of the website.
• Kentico advanced workflows enabling the CMS administrators to edit, review, final review and publish, with email notifications and version control.
• A mobile accessible portal for council Rangers to quickly input lost animals while they are on the road using a mobile-responsive form.
• An event pages template with standard fields for content editors to easily submit new events, plus a powerful event calendar for website users to find out what's going on in their community.
• Multiple page templates, each giving administrators the ability to customise the layout and placement of widgets according to their needs, without requiring a developer.
• Newsroom widgets that allow website visitors to search and filter news articles.
• Document search for users to find and identify attachments.
• Restricted content area functionality to hide content unless a user agrees to the terms and conditions.

The Result

The council now possesses a website that successfully meets all their branding, functionality and customisation needs, that has also considerably reduced their future licensing and development costs. The site features a modern design that is easy to navigate for website visitors, and an easy to use backend for content administrators, making the website a more efficient and enjoyable experience for everyone involved. And by training a wide range of employees from different departments within the council, we enabled the council to continue to grow and modify their website on their own.

Now that this sustainability-minded council has an equally sustainable website, their staff can focus on delivering services to local residents effectively and efficiently. We are continuing to work with this forward-thinking council as they expand how they utilise their digital environment, and look forward to seeing where they take their digital strategy next!