“ Now that I’m using Sitecore, I have the tools to effectively manage our site and provide an engaging, informative, valuable user experience to our membership. „

- Diane Barry, NJEA Associate Director of Communications

Challenge

NJEA’s mission is to advance and protect the rights, benefits, and interests of its members, and to promote a quality system of public education for all students.

With more than 200,000 members, NJEA wanted to be sure to engage their online user base, while providing value to its members.

Some of the website challenges to overcome included:

• Content overload: Visitors were presented with a massive amount of content that needed to be better organized. As a result, members were struggling to find information that was relevant.
• Lack of structure: The site lacked a strategic methodology and structure  - especially regarding what should have top billing on the home page. As a result, there were no rules in place to determine how any of the pages should look.  Plus, many people felt that NJEA was lacking content they needed – when in fact it was there, buried and difficult to find.
• Inefficiencies:  Due to the way the site was built, there were multiple ways of administering different content, and site editors had to do things multiple times in order to get content to display in multiple places.  This was inefficient, and didn’t allow NJEA to react as quickly as needed, especially with regard to time-sensitive issues and breaking news.
• Outdated technology:  NJEA was using an older CMS that had a thick and limiting structure.

Solution

Slamm, a Sitecore partner, was chosen to work with NJEA on their new site.  Slamm was chosen based on their experience in working with enterprise-class user experience projects, foundation- based attitude, and their infectious enthusiasm for getting things done right.

 Slamm became deeply involved in discovering NJEA’s assets, the way they produced their content, the volume of content, and how they wanted to bring everything together.  As Slamm started to formulate what they wanted to do, and how the base framework needed to grow – it became obvious that NJEA needed to step into a different type of environment. Slamm felt that NJEA needed a more robust, enterprise-class CMS, and after evaluating several content management solutions, they ultimately recommended Sitecore.

There were many pieces to this project:

• Site architecture: One of the first things that Slamm did was to build the new architecture from the ground up.  They wanted to:

             1. Organize the content in a logical hierarchy.

             2. Filter content in a way that was relevant to the site vistor (Teacher, ESP, retired member, etc.)

             3. Create a framework that would allow NJEA to easily manage the site  and its thousands of pages of content. Slamm also looked at how they could build some processes into the framework that would allow NJEA to move quickly. For example, if something happens in the State Legislature that is relevant to NJEA and its members, NJEA needed a way to quickly link to related articles, videos, commercials, TV, etc. – in one place.

• Integrations with other technologies:  Slamm integrated more than 20 NJEA custom-built .NET applications.  These technologies give NJEA members access to benefits information, membership information, legislative resources, and much more.
   
• Migrating content:  A major piece of the project was migrating thousands of pages of content from the existing NJEA web site to the new Sitecore web site.   Utilizing the Sitecore CMS APIs, Slamm was able to migrate the majority of the news content in a fraction of the time and cost that it would have taken to do manually.

Slamm used a consistent approach in how the content is displayed, so that regardless of what section of the site is displayed, a user could become accustomed to how NJEA communicated information, and would be able to quickly find and consume the information they were looking for.  

NJEA also wanted its content to be sticky and interactive, so Slamm integrated a way for members to update their profile information, provide feedback, and vote.

“This was a great project for us,” says Leo Daiuto, Slamm’s Chief Creative Officer and CEO. “NJEA really allowed us to partner with them on this and become part of their team. In truly digging in and understanding what their pain points are today and what they dream of tomorrow, we were able to build a solution that not only puts a whole new face on NJEA but builds a framework for growth for many years.”

Result

The new NJEA site is now much more powerful, and logically organized. With the strategic architecture and methodology in place, there are no longer any questions about what gets “top billing” on the home page, and users can quickly find the information they’re looking for. 

Other results from the new site include:

• Microsites: NJEA can now create a “micro page” regarding a specific campaign – including links to assets they have, external links to other environments, and links into social media assets.
• Relevant content: Content is now more meaningful and relevant, based on each member’s role in the association.  Visitors still have the ability to see the rest of the content on the site, but on the member page when logged in, the content is now more targeted.
• Positive reaction from the members: Reaction to the new site has been overwhelmingly positive. Members have responded with statements such as, “Wow!” and “Awesome site!” NJEA is very pleased with the new site, and is excited about moving forward.

“We’re so pleased with our new, beautifully designed, easy-to-navigate website, created and implemented by Slamm,” noted Diane Barry, NJEA Associate Director of Communications. “We have a vast amount of content, and it was a challenge to streamline it so our members could easily find the information and services they are looking for. Now that I’m using Sitecore, I have the tools to effectively manage our site and provide an engaging, informative, valuable user experience to our membership.”

Technical Description

As Sitecore is a very open platform, NJEA was able to build and integrate its own custom membership database into the new web site as a way to authenticate their more than 200,000 members.  This was a huge win for NJEA as no additional management overhead was necessary for managing web site users.