Tourism research leaps at EPiServer CMS

Wins by changing platform

Often clients come to Intergen asking: Do we undertake renovations to what we've got or will we gain significantly more through a total architectural rethink? It was a clearcut decision for the New Zealands Ministry of Tourism's research team when Intergen demonstrated the wins that could be made by instituting EPiServer CMS architecture as the platform to redevelop their existing CMS based tourism research website. Common goals demonstrated the leverage that could be made, and the strategy was set to redesign their existing and ageing website and bring it into the fully supported and flexible EPiServer CMS environment.

"It was a case of leveraging off a path that had already proven hugely effective for the Ministry of Economic Development, and weighing up the impressive range of features that came straight out of the box with EPiServer CMS – together that made the strategy pretty compelling," says Mark Miller. Web Analyst, Ministry of Tourism Research.

Optimizing usability and easy navigation

The website delivers big picture information right down to grass roots analysis for tourism industry stakeholders. It supports a range of users from tourism operators to academics, local government groups and international tourism organizations. Meaty and wide-ranging data, analysis, tourism publications and research sits on the site, making easy navigation a key requirement. The Ministry of Tourism engaged the services of Optimal Usability to research the needs of users and provided the Intergen development team with an exceptional brief for moving forward.

Easy to update and maintain

The new Ministry of Tourism Research website has delivered on all priorities. Navigation is simple and intuitive and a three-tiered approach to data dissemination enables stakeholders to access information areas at a depth appropriate to their needs – from a high level general overview to a Power User mechanism that can access Citrix databases.

Mark Miller cites other major improvements: "Administratively speaking, the site is much easier to maintain and it's easier to update content in highly viewed areas. We have the ability to maintain registered users more easily. Really Simple Syndication allows for easy notification of new content and these alerts are a good added value feature for our users. We've had excellent feedback from the tourism industry since we went live with the new site in late May."