The Pain
It was time to put the stand-alone existing NZ Army website into formation with the shared NZDF Microsoft Content Management Server platform, and create a more professional, dynamic website presence for the NZ Army.
Armed with experience.
The shared Microsoft CMS platform is hosted by NZDF, with websites built by Intergen. The investment that NZDF had made in this platform was to be realised many times over. Common templates and functionality were able to be utilised in the website design, minimising cost considerably.
NZDF CMS System Administrator Christina Porter comments, “We put a lot into this platform and it is rewarding us with the ability to reuse technology that Intergen has built for us. Reusing functionality is not only smart, but with experience gained across several websites, we can go a step further and continually evolve what we have to make areas even better. A proven road map in this case made a considerable difference to how quickly this site could be turned around in such tight time constraints.”
e-Govt compliancy right on target.
As the majority of web-based work that the Intergen creative team undertakes is for government agencies, sound experience existed in how to build an attractive and functional website that would meet e-Govt guidelines.
Intergen’s Customer Relationship Manager Mark Trotter explains, “We pretty much live and breath e-Govt compliance, so that knowledge set us up perfectly to not only ensure NZDF’s requirements were met from an e-Govt point of view, but to deliver good engaging design at the same time.”
High traffic on the website – around 50,000 plus visits per month – brings a strong responsibility to deliver information that is clear and easy to access, particularly with the website often being the first point of contact for people considering a career in the Army.
Plenty of muscle in new Army website presence.
Army Web Master Lyndy Dutch operates in the front line as the Army Internet Content Manager, and says that feedback has been excellent since the August go live date.
“The release of the SAS documentary on TV, resulted in 75,000 visits to the website in four weeks, and traffic on the site is consistently the highest of all the defence services. The main visited pages are careers, and our recruitment people are underway with user-testing to determine the influence that the website has on recruitment. A web pop up survey gave us plenty of positive feedback across the board, with people liking the character of the site. We’ve gained a website presence with a strong look and feel and it offers a better overall user experience than before. The next phase is to add more interaction, movies and more reality - hands on aspects to the site.”
The Gain
The NZ Army website now has a purposeful call to action. By taking advantage of a shared NZDF Microsoft Content Management platform, the new website has been achieved while minimising development costs and maximising the presence of the NZ Army at work.