Propelling History Into The Future: CanadasHistory.ca
Challenge
Canada’s History aims to enrich contemporary Canadian lives by helping us understand our past. From magazines to multi-media, their many resources are designed for curious Canadians of all ages, as well as history teachers whom the organization provides with access to relevant and engaging classroom resources. The organization also presents the Governor General’s History Awards to teachers who have displayed an exceptional dedication to students and innovation in their field. Though well respected within the history community, Canada’s History wanted to reposition their brand as an engaging resource for more people, and to revitalize the public’s perception of history itself. Thus, ecentricarts was called upon to help Canada’s History: Increase site engagement and connection with the Canadian public Improve revenue streams with an increase in subscriptions, ad revenue, sponsors and partnerships Showcase their content and encourage site exploration
Solution
In March 2017, ecentricarts relaunched CanadasHistory.ca; a beautiful, responsive, accessible website that drives both magazine subscriptions and article exploration, and showcases our client’s rich content and awards. A large part of the redesign was to give users, and the organization themselves, more control over content. The new design and CMS upgrade to Kentico 10 now allows Canada’s History to enter, edit, and curate their content (both owned and sponsored) with ease, while the site's end-users are able to explore and filter through rich historical content by media type, eras, locations, and themes of interest. Key User Experience Features Improved search and content navigation with in-depth tagging system/filters Sections are expandable and collapsible for ease of use Meets AODA accessibility standards Custom disruptive subscription CTAs are also screen-reader compatible Custom preview and page layout functions added to simplify client’s content entry experience Page admins can easily manage themes and filter categories via custom tables Key Design Features Fresh and clean design, highlighting content with large, bold images Distilled most content pieces into a single page template/type for consistency and easy content entry Bottom footer designed with large subscription CTA and social media icons Responsive design with collapsable filtering and minimal, photo-forward results pages Key Technology Features Kentico 10 CMS, custom flexible widgets, and AdSpeed integration allows for simple addition/removal of rail and banner sponsored ads Customized content entry and previewing process using WYSIWYG tools/plugins from CKedit A11ychecker for easy identification of accessibility levels and issues within the CMS Balloon Panel (required for a11ychecker preview) Angular 2 for story lists, filterings, and prerendering for SEO Use of a Listicle Widget for easy article layout
Results
Increased mobile usage (up) 50% Increased magazine subscriptions (up) 38% Reduced time needed to update home and landing pages (down) 90%
Want fresh marketing stories in your inbox?
Get the weekly email that makes you a marketing genius.
Stay informed and inspired, for free.