The Process

Beginning with a series of interviews with ABET's leadership, information technology and marketing stakeholders, The Berndt Group identified ABET's key goals for their website redesign in order to provide the organization with a clear operational vision of how to more easily manage the site going forward, including basic rules of thumb, strategies for topical content, editorial flow, metadata, and content retention. In order to meet the objectives of the redesign, The Berndt Group considered a market-driven model, where the site was developed based on the users' motivations and needs, not on the organizational divisions within ABET.

In order to do this, The Berndt Group's information architecture and usability experts developed strategies to easily allow ABET user groups to log in and find specific documents and processes relevant to their work. Prior to the redesign, ABET kept most of this high value content restricted to a downloadable PDF format where its content could not be easily searched or linked to. Addressing this issue required a system that would support the integration of this copy into the main site where relevant links could be added throughout the content. Because all content was transformed to a structured format within the Ektron CMS, the process of content entry was relatively fast and allowed for rich inter-relation with all of the other relevant content in the system through taxonomy and a more robust Lucene-based search engine.

The Berndt Group also worked through a number of other strategic challenges, including creating an improved password-protected area to easily allow ABET user groups to log in and find specific documents and processes relevant to their work. Important ABET user groups can now have a seamless login between their Association Management System (AMS) and ABET.org, and the site features more interesting design, outreach to all audiences via e-newsletters, cross-linking of related content, streamlined event calendars and other techniques that enhance the overall user experience.

Results

With the recent launch of the new and improved ABET.org, ABET has a highly engaging site that encourages a wider range of audiences to explore the site in its entirety, learning more about how ABET continues to provide world leadership in the arena of technology-based education.  The new site has a fresher, more powerful design, and the Ektron CMS platform allows even non-technical staff to easily manage the site content and create a richer experience for the end user without technical intervention from their IT department. ABET.org exhibits the kind of comprehensive, high-value improvements The Berndt Group regularly brings to professional development and educational organizations. 

Related links

ABET Web site ›ABET Launches New Web site Using Ektron CMS with TBG ›