Housing Institute of Australia
Summary
HIA is the Housing Industry Association - the voice of Australia's home building industry.
HIA represents the interests of the whole housing industry - from trade contractors, builders, and suppliers through to product manufacturers. HIA's logo is proudly displayed as a badge of professionalism on building sites around Australia.
Challenge
Due to the HIA breadth of service across so many building professions, audiences and regions, their content needed to be highly structured in order to deliver key benefits to their members.
In addition, the site had to be searchable and marketers needed the ability to create customized content for specific channels and audiences.
Solution
WDG implemented Sitecore Content Server with a number of customised options that allowed the delivery of personalised content for six channels which included:
- Builder
- Trade Contractor
- Business Partner
- Kitchens & Bathrooms
- Manufacturers
- Consumers
The content also needed to be customised for the 20 HIA geographically specific regions. In addition, WDG implemented DT Search in order to provide an extensive search facility for website users. In the second phase of the project, WDG implemented an eNews functionality, which allows HIA marketers to create personalised communication across regions and channels and to deliver details such as information sheets, product news and other related content.
The key to success lay in the initial planning - ensuring that the project team has a clear understanding of each customer group, as well as the technology platform used to deliver content.
Working as a team
WDG teamed up with HIA's in-house developers to ensure strong understanding of each customer group. Eser personas were created for each of HIA's customer segments. This allowed WDG to gain a clear understanding of the user needs so to build an online experience that was right for them.
The strategy sessions involved a number of stakeholders across the business to gain a solid understanding of their customer base. Customer interviews were also conducted and provided the project team with a valuable source of insight.
The initial strategy sessions helped set the tone for the entire project - from website structure and content, to design and layout. With so much content required to keep the site fresh and relevant, the choice of content management system was also important and achieved in partnership with WDG.
The functionality was then jointly developed with HIA’s in-house developers. In order to create a partnering, skills-transfer environment for both HIA and WDG developers, the team invested in some key steps.
The first step was to carry out Sitecore Developer and Administrator Training. Then workshops were held to determine which team was best suited to do which components of the work. The guiding principle was that interaction with existing systems was to be achieved by HIA.
Lastly, a regular ‘Problem Resolution Forum’ was established between the two teams.
WDG established a strong relationship with HIA and has achieved key timeline targets and high levels of skills transfer. In addition WDG and HIA deployed Microsoft Team Foundation Server to manage the software development lifecycle.
Result
The end result is an integrated website offering a high level of online communications and member management.
The site was built using Sitecore – which enables the HIA team to continue to update and manage its investment.
Technical Description
The new HIA website has extensive additional functionality, including
- Sophisticated management of member details (through an ERP management system) which includes inputting new member details, renewals, reminders and event registration
- Integration to existing member information
- Online communication functionality whereby personalised and targeted information can be sent to specific areas.
- Dynamic news content enabling instant news postings
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