Because the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) fast tracks the development process and minimises build costs, it proved to be the ideal technology to deliver CEDP’s website on a shorter timescale.
Challenge
Because CEDP’s Sitecore editors and marketers were challenged by some native Sitecore functions not working as expected. it was important to ensure that the new Sitecore instance delivers all the features required to make the editing and reporting process easier
As a result, CEDP wanted a robust platform that allowed it to meet its business objectives, one of which is to provide an easy way for parents to identify CEDP schools that meet their needs.
Sitecore was the obvious choice to address a whole raft of concerns:
Solution
Following a demo to showcase Sitecore’s capabilities (which would be perfect for CEDP's digital objectives) our team in Australia got to work.
Because the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) fast tracks the development process and minimises build costs, it proved to be the ideal technology to deliver CEDP’s website on a shorter timescale.
As such the website was built using SXA on Sitecore version 10.
Our delivery methodology consists of 5 phases. It follows a hybrid agile approach that gives our customers full flexibility in the way agile processes are adopted.
After initial consultations and various discovery sessions we ran reports and got useful data from Google Analytics to support the strategic success metrics of the project.
Doing this helped us reach a ‘source of truth’. It allowed us to identify key areas that would help in adding value and defining the customer experience. From audience analysis and content to personalisation and agile road-mapping.
This insight flowed into wireframing, Information Architecture (IA), Sitecore personalisation and marketing automation opportunities, each designed to solve problems and achieve success.
Our team responded by updating the IA / sitemap and re-designing the website.
Our digital experience team worked closely with CEDP to devise and implement an effective personalisation strategy aimed at driving enrolments, increasing engagement, and reducing bounce rates.
As with any organisation, communication with its audience is vital. Using SXA's integration capabilities we connected CEDP's social accounts into one field. This 'mash-up' approach provides the flexibility to choose the desired social channel to post on, whether YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, or Facebook.
Measuring success is essential to improvement. As a result we identified KPIs and put in place a robust measurement framework focussing on three key areas that can be measured in Sitecore’s Experience Analytics, Experience Profile and in Google Analytics:
Two search types have been added to the new website: General search and 'Find a School.' Both are intuitive, simple, and effective. For general search users enter the desired keywords and filter their search based on 'Page Type'.
The 'Find a School' feature is integrated with Google Maps. It also includes two fields, one with a dropdown listing the type of school, the other a suburb or postcode field which has predictive autofill capabilities.
Personalisation has been implemented to various pages throughout the website, which include the Home Page Hero Carousel using both Sitecore out of the box rule engine, as well as a custom rule developed by Codehouse to achieve decay.
For example, the user experiences the Open Day Hero Carousel, which has a call to action and hyperlink around promoting the Open Day Page which has information on the Open Days of all CEDP schools during key enrolment periods. After the visitor has completed the goal, or if the visitor does not complete the goal within three home page loads, the visitor is presented with alternative/personalised messaging promoting the CEDP Difference on the Why Us page, before reverting to the default Hero Carousel.
In addition, CEDP's content teams now can create and publish global messages to schools across the entire network. These include news articles, alerts and announcements.
The integration of CEDP's social media channels and a consolidated social feed component ensures that content editors can easily add social content directly through Sitecore.
When each school’s site is operational, it will be able to post to social channels a lot easier because every school's social feed is dynamically updated with the most recent social posts. This fluidity ensures that each school is always up-to-date with whatever is being posted on social media channels, be it Facebook, Instagram YouTube, or Vimeo.
Summary of results
CEDP launched its system site on 27 January 2022 and is currently building the first batch of its school sites for rollout in Q2.
Visit the CEDP website at www.parra.catholic.edu.au
