Integrated Telecommunication Systems Launches New Website
June 16, 2016 filed under: News, Website Design
When Illinois-based Integrated Telecommunication Systems (ITS) approached me about building a new website for them, they had been struggling for a while with an outdated site that was difficult to update. It didn’t use a CMS, wasn’t mobile friendly and required them to deal with HTML code any time they needed to make site updates. They wanted something with a new look and feel that spoke more directly to their primary audience of engineers and that generated new leads.
We re-architected the site from scratch and it now has a modern, mobile-friendly design that leverages well-chosen stock photography to speak to their audience. A content model was applied to ExpressionEngine so that the client can now easily add and manage website content without having to touch HTML code.
In our work around content, I steered the client toward writing more about the benefits they offer to their clients and less talking about themselves. On the design side of things, we focused on the high-level certifications they have to lend credibility and we also pulled in testimonials from their customers to help tell the story of their expertise. We focused calls to action on what makes them stand out from their competitors: their experience and ability to solve hard problems.
Here are few other project highlights:
- Added alert messages to the top of the website to promote training events that are a big part of ITS's business.
- Created a custom event registration form.
- Created a mailing list signup to build their existing mailing list.
- Created a new FAQ section - this was important because a lot of ITS's work is technical and they get asked the same questions many times. Now users can get answers directly from the website or staff can simply send links to questions they receive via email which saves time.
- Added a news feature so they can actively get the word out about the work they're doing.
- Created 301 redirects at go live to ensure that search engine rank wasn't lost and users would seamlessly be redirected to the new page URL.
Previously, the client wasn’t tracking any website data, but with Google Analytics running on the new site, we can now monitor successes and failures and learn from them. Though we don't have data from the old site to compare to, we are already seeing users respond to the new site by completing the registration form and signing up for the mailing list. We’ll be reviewing the Analytics data after the first quarter to make suggestions for continued improvement.