"Not only can our website visitors and members search more accurately for destinations, education programs and NVQ courses, but they can book tickets and buy English Heritage products online. And what’s even better, they can do it ten times faster. Thanks to Digirati's implementation of Content Manager, www.english-heritage.org.uk has gone from functional to outstanding and we’ve done it sleeker, more securely and faster than we ever imagined.”
Danil Mikhailov, Head of Online Communication, English Heritage.
Overview
Sector: Central Government
Organisation Size: 2000 employees
11 million visitors a year to over
400 locations around the UK
700,000 members
£30million grants given out each year
Project Name: English Heritage Corporate Website
Audience: General public, members, heritage communities and enthusiasts
Challenge:
- Create a more up-to-date look and feel.
- New services including an online ticket office, venue search and hire, and an online shop.
- Better facilities for both professional users and English Heritage members.
- Increased functionality that could enable more personalized content, greater search facilities and better targeted marketing.
- Bring website technology in line with many disparate data systems to provide a more streamlined and functional approach to communications.
Solution:
- Bespoke ecommerce functionality with integration to payment gateway, CRM and reporting systems. The CMS is used as a catalogue for items sold on the site.
- Data Migration – Content was migrated from a number of sources into centralised, manageable well-structured CMS (e.g. Blue Plaques, Battlefields).
- Ticket management and booking for events at English Heritage properties implemented using CMS as repository for information.
- Centralised user authentication system (Heritage Passport).
- Integration with Heritage Passport, a shared-credential system for multiple English Heritage web sites.
- Purchase of English Heritage Membership, renewals, gifts of membership etc on the site.
- Purchase of Overseas Visitors passes on the site.
- Calendaring system for holiday cottage booking system.
- Integration with Geospatial (GIS) systems for location based searching.
- Management of user personalisation (bookmarks, regional settings etc) on the EH web site.
- Cross site search integration with existing English Heritage web sites including combination of content and geospatial searching.
- Multi-purpose import and export to feed data about English Heritage properties and events to other systems.
- Integration with Job Vacancy system.
- Integration with Multimap for geospatial searches, and use of Multimap as a server-side geocoding service to allow for geospatial searches of content in the Alterian CMS including Ordnance Survey mapping.
Results:
- Flexible agile incremental approach where many workstreams were run in parallel saved on time duration and costs.
- A powerful, flexible system, rich in functionality which draws together vast quantities of data into a single streamlined access point.
- A comprehensive e-commerce platform that enables its visitors to perform event booking, accommodation searches, membership renewals and signups.
- The new website is easier to navigate, more engaging and intuitive; delivering users to pages that are more relevant.
- Rich search functionality - from the ‘autofill’ function which suggests wording for searches, to GIS integration for property searches and search engine/Ordnance Survey map cross-referencing.
- Search functionality was delivered by building on native CMS search which saved money on third party search technology and reduced time to deliver.
- Visitors can now select their own type of user experience and recieve personalized content targeted to specific interest groups including access to personalised special promotions, bookmarks, accommodation bookings, and regional settings.
Technology
- Alterian Enterprise CMS (.NET version)
URL: www.english-heritage.org.uk
Background
Host to thousands of pages of content serving over 11 million visitors to over 400 historical locations a year, English Heritage is a government website which is dedicated to the care, protection and preservation of places, skills and landscapes of England’s historical past.
www.english-heritage.org.uk needed a design and functionality facelift and, working with consultation partner Digirati, selected Alterian’s Content Manager solution to act as the lynchpin between multiple disparate data silos and the visiting public.
English Heritage not only provides information on over 400 historic sites around England, it hosts 10 million photographs, surveys, plus educational resources from discovery for school children to NVQs, job boards and member promotions. English Heritage serves day-trippers and general public with information on days out and places to visit, as well as a large community of professional users from academics to councils and the development trade. The website needed to develop as a sales point for ticket sales, accommodation and other products as well as improving our ability to serve specific academic research and other content to professional users.
English Heritage is the Government’s statutory adviser on the historic environment and the lead body for the heritage sector. Responsible for the care and protection of hundreds of national and regional historic assets, places of worship and local heritage sites, English Heritage also has a comprehensive education plan involving nearly half a million school children a year.
The organization is involved with conservation, environmental consultancy and provides grants to projects looking to restore or develop places and destination points of historical interest. English Heritage promotes the protection and resurrection of skilled traditional tradespeople through NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications), which assist in the restoration and care of historical sites within its current project remit such as Stonehenge, The Secret Wartime Tunnels at Dover, Wrest Park and maintenance of Grade-listed buildings such as Ditherington Flax Mill.
The Challenge
English Heritage puts its website at the heart of its promotional campaigns to attract visitors to England’s historical places of interest. With 350,000 unique web visitors a month searching for information on over 400 historical sites, www.english-heritage.org.uk hosts a wealth of information about England and the English Heritage corporate organization for day visitors and professional academic, council and developer trade users.
English Heritage spent considerable time deciding upon a five year strategic plan for the future of the website. This led to the isolation of several key targets which came into the technology, content and design of www.english-heritage.org.uk.
From the back-end perspective, English Heritage wanted to bring control of the website within reach of internal developers and its existing family of Microsoft .Net applications. Content consultations with users had isolated a number of issues which included a more up-to-date look and feel to the website for visitors and new services including an online ticket office, venue search and hire, and an online shop. It also wanted better facilities for both professional users and English Heritage members to benefit from. English Heritage wanted to implement increased functionality that could enable more personalized content, greater search facilities and better targeted marketing.
However, English Heritage knew there was a greater issue than a new content management system and website re-design could fix. “English Heritage commands a wealth of data and a variety of content. From e-commerce sales to academic research, www.english-heritage.org.uk uses different information to serve both our public and professional users. We wanted to do that better and this meant bringing our website technology in line with other systems to provide a more streamlined and functional approach to our communications”, explained Danil Mikhailov, Head of Online Communication at English Heritage.
These disparate databases contained essential information that English Heritage knew was valuable to its plans to drive even better strategic communications to its public and members. Aspects of data across the organization; from members to the blue historical ‘building of interest’ plaques, were held separately and relied on being manually drawn together when needed. By bringing the website onto a .Net platform, English Heritage were looking to not only unify communication standards behind the scenes, but eliminate the costs associated with a third party making amendments and changes to the website.
Helping to map a path through the design, content and technology requirements, English Heritage began a process involving five competitive tenders from which system integration consultants Digirati and the Content Manager solution were selected.
The Solution
Danil continued, “Based on Digirati's guidance, Content Manager became attractive to us as the complexity of our needs could be accommodated within the scalability of the .Net solution. This meant we could build a rich platform which would integrate with the data we needed and at the same time ensure we could implement e-commerce transactional capabilities, make our own content changes and develop bespoke functionality without limitation. In addition, not only was it a fully fledged technical solution, Content Manager offered the usability at the front-end to support the different needs of our one-off visitors, our members and the more specific requirements of our professional web users”.
Working with the English Heritage web team, Digirati created the outline of a re-write, re-build and re-structuring of the whole website that would change the tone of the www.english-heritage.org.uk website.
From their original specifications, English Heritage placed significant importance on the evolution of their own bespoke technology and the requirements of the academics and council personnel who make up the professional users of the website. With the focus firmly on developing a solution that would scale and develop, English Heritage was able to use the flexibility of Content Manager to adopt a different way of advancing the project.
Using Digirati’s Agile methodology and Content Manager’s capability to host multiple websites, English Heritage launched a workable testing site which could house iterations of the solutions as they were built. This meant English Heritage could evaluate the design, content and functionality of the platform during the process of construction, feeding back testing outcomes, user comments and working within Content Manager to ensure the end solution was a genuine fit against its business requirements. As Danil explains, “By working closely with Digirati we were able to develop a relationship that was based on open and honest feedback. For English Heritage this resulted in a much more efficient model of build. We could start migrating content from our old site, at the same time we were pulling in data from our outlying repositories onto Content Manager and testing the creative designs through our content contributors and focus groups. Doing this work simultaneously was something we hadn’t imagined at the beginning of the project but was recommended to us by Digirati. It made an immeasurable difference to the timescales and costs typically involved with these types of projects. Internally, it served a significant benefit as the piece by piece production gave us ample opportunity to review the solution outcomes against our original objectives, resolving issues before they become too embedded and minimizing risks.”
With a separation of repository, design and administration, English Heritage used Content Manager to its best advantage. Maximizing its appeal to the developers and designers, English Heritage gave creative teams the power to construct style sheets and templates. At the same time, old site content was categorized and automatically migrated and the construction of the e-commerce platform began in earnest.
The resulting solution used Content Manager to increase the scope of content available to users and give them the advantage of new experiences online. From the integration of a bespoke built e-commerce solution to the calendaring systems, Geospatial (GIS) systems, bookmarks, job postings and search facilities, the new website would deliver for all types of website user as well extending its reach beyond the website into social media.
The Results
“www.english-heritage.org.uk is a beautiful, well sewn together website. The richness of functionality has been handcrafted to deliver a powerful, flexible system which draws together vast quantities of data into a single streamlined access point of Alterian Content Manager. In achieving these levels of technical flexibility, English Heritage has attained its objectives of a comprehensive e-commerce platform that enables its visitors to perform event booking, accommodation searches, membership renewals and signups. www.english-heritage.org.uk is now a complete one-stop shop which fully supports the demands of the public whatever their request about England’s historical places of interest”, commented Danil.
In addition to the transactional improvements, English Heritage has created a better user experience online. During its strategic planning, English Heritage identified areas which could benefit from better internal linking. The new website engages users and delivers them to pages that are more relevant but also carry additional signposting to less well explored areas of similar content. English Heritage has more than 100 editors making content changes simultaneously. This content is reviewed by an additional 100 approvers who check for accuracy and quality. This greater proliferation of editors and approvers mean content delivery internally through the Content Manager interface is swift and seamless and ultimately means fresher content that keeps web visitors returning time and time again. The new website is easier to navigate, more engaging and intuitive. Greater search functionality from the built-in Alterian search has saved money on a third party search technology, improved time to market, with better support and a saving of thousands of pounds. Visitor searches are now littered with rich functionality, from the ‘autofill’ function which suggests wording for searches, to GIS integration for property searches and search engine/Ordnance Survey map cross-referencing.
Visitors to www.english-heritage.org.uk can now select their own type of user experience. Members and professional users have new areas which now carry personalized content directly targeted to their specific interest groups. For members, integration to Heritage Passport, a shared-credential system for multiple English Heritage websites means access to special promotions, bookmarks, accommodation bookings, and regional settings present members with marketing offers and promotions better suited to their individual profiles.
English Heritage combines the strength of its online marketing with its offline strategies to ensure even greater member insight that drives further adoption from its 700,000 strong member database. “Not only can our website visitors and members search more accurately for destinations, education programs and NVQ courses, but they can book tickets and buy English Heritage products online. And what’s even better, they can do it ten times faster. Thanks to Digirati's implementation of Content Manager, www.english-heritage.org.uk has gone from functional to outstanding and we’ve done it sleeker, more securely and faster than we ever imagined”, Danil concluded.
