Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario

ETFO is a professional and protective organization that represents around 83,000 members. It has been working for over 20 years to protect the right of all Ontarians to public education and decent work as well as to promote equity and social justice.

Its obsolete SharePoint Site was not only difficult to manage, but the search functionality wasn’t working well, and the organization was drowning in a number of microsites. User experience was suffering, too.

ETFO knew they didn’t just need a new website, but a total digital transformation. They reached to Inorbital, web design company and Kentico Gold Partner, with these key goals:  

• Bolster engagement, expand their audience and increase political action
• Give the website an updated look with a fresh and accessible design
• Improve navigation through a simplified site layout and logical information flow
• Enhance website search features and ensure intuitive functionality
• Future-proof the site with a robust platform that was flexible enough to allow updating of all visual aspects
• Make the site mobile ready with seamless content sharing to social media platforms
• Ensure smooth user experience of the member portal and microsites with single sign on

Challenges

The old website had over 28,000 pages and member content was mixed in with the public site, making the navigation difficult to use. Therefore, one of the key challenges was to re-organize and strategize the site’s information architecture.  

Editors previously found it difficult to manage content, so Inorbital had to take an admin-first approach to developing reusable widgets for content editing. The team also had to rethink the search functionality, so that users would no longer have to wade through pages of irrelevant search results to find what they needed.

Due to the sensitive nature of the thousands of documents housed on the member portal, ETFO required a variety of security checks and role permissions.

In the end, Kentico proved to be the best digital experience platform to achieve these goals.

Solution

ETFO was particularly keen on Kentico for:  

• .NET core functionality
• Seamless integration with Microsoft Dynamics
• High performance with Microsoft Azure
• Security
• Flexibility and scalability

Inorbital placed extra emphasis on developing the information architecture. They worked closely with ETFO to craft a comprehensive content inventory that separated the public vs. non-public content. These content types then stood at the base of the information architecture and decisions made during the UX research.   

The new website required a combination of dynamic and manual content management and an easy-to-use system of designing custom page layouts, for which Kentico Page Builder and custom widgets were used. The widgets often included interfaces that could dynamically pull in content, as well as override options for maximum flexibility.  

Research had revealed that most visits to the website were one-off Google searches. So, in order to keep users on the website, the team built a custom smart search with intuitive advanced filters and tagging.

Roles application helps to determine editor privilege levels for the Secure portal as well as what different members could see. For example, some roles enable users to upload files to a gated repository on the ETFO Secure site without them having to log in to the backend of the system.

The ETFO member portal has a bi-directional connection with Dynamics and Kentico user accounts and roles are synchronized with contacts and roles stored in the CRM. Once logged into the member portal, users can manage their contact information. Updates are automatically applied to their contact record in Dynamics.

As for the new look and feel of the site, the brand colors were updated to be AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) compliant, and their logo was modernized with fresh colors that reflect the diverse nature of the union. 

Results

The new ETFO.ca website features a refreshed brand, much-improved design, and total overhaul of the information architecture. Its intuitive and reliable search functionality with advanced filtering and enhanced navigation make for a much better user experience.  

Content editors can now build new pages with ease using drag and drop widgets and are able to update content quickly and easily. The robust roles and permissions settings meet ETFO’s exacting security requirements, and the single sign on for the newly envisioned Secure portal makes for a seamless user experience for both members and the public.