
Your website is the front door to your organization. It’s important to keep it looking and functioning at its best for the benefit of site visitors and any team members who need to use it on the backend. Keeping current with any patches or minor updates is important. But eventually, that won’t be enough to keep your site running smoothly and you’ll need to commit to a site refresh that includes an upgrade to your CMS.
Our client, Versiti blood centers, recently found itself at this decision point. They had been relying on a version of Kentico that was due to be phased out — meaning all those updates, patches and support for their version would be going away, too.
Their leadership team made the smart decision to get ahead of the planned phase-out and move their site to the newest version of Kentico - Kentico MVC. Doing so meant they would be able to keep their Kentico support and make some other improvements to the site’s overall look, feel, and user experience (UX).
As Versiti’s web design and development partner, CID’s team was tasked with:
The first step at CID for any project is the discovery phase. For this website redesign, we involved key members of Versiti’s team in workshops that helped us gain a deeper understanding of what they needed a new site to do, functionality they liked or didn’t like, and features that were important to their departments and ultimately, site users.
Our UX designers, web developers, and digital strategists also performed independent research on the existing site, including:
This data, along with insights from collaborative discovery workshops, shaped our solution strategy for the migration to Kentico MVC and helped us move into the next phase of the build.
Throughout the process there was constant communication between CID’s internal teams, and between CID and Versiti. Having open lines of communication were vital for handling changes and requests in a way that allowed our teams to remain agile.
Versiti is an multifaceted organization with locations and interests in multiple states, which meant the site required some complex backend development. It also meant there were massive amounts of content to migrate to the new Kentico MVC site.
CID worked closely with Versiti to reorganize and consolidate some of that content to create a more seamless user journey for users navigating from section to section. Paired with a modern, uncluttered design and an organized menu, the new site offers users simple navigation for what is in reality a very deep site.
The move to Kentico MVC improved site speed significantly for users. And, it’s helped Versiti’s marketing team work more efficiently thanks to built-in automations and processes that make updating content simple.
Beautifully designed page elements and smart use of photos brings out the emotion at the heart of Versiti’s brand. Images of donors, recipients, and researchers appear throughout the site to bring a human connection to the user.
Within just one month of launch, time on the home page increased, the bounce rate decreased, and traffic to key site pages was up thanks to improved design, better UX, and strong calls-to-action.
Get a better performing, modern website for your business. Contact us to get started.