Vardot

Challenge Al Khaleej wanted to provide their readers with a convenient and cutting-edge newspaper experience personalized across all devices - and they identified Drupal as the ideal technology to support their transformative ambitions. This is where Vardot comes in. Al Khaleej has sought out Vardot’s award-winning Drupal web design and development services to build the new Al Khaleej website using Drupal 8 and Varbase CMS. Solution Transforming Al Khaleej into a reader-first digital experience required 4 months of research and insight analysis from our team. This intimate study into user preferences and behavior ensured that we prioritized key UX issues in the new Drupal site: Page loading is faster than ever. Enhanced personalization features. User and search engine-friendly content categorization. Accessibility features for all readers. Social sharing features. Intuitive design across all screen sizes. Results User-friendly and multilingual backend UX for all departments involved in content publishing (technical and non-technical). Seamless content publishing and moderation based on user roles and permissions defined by the actual editorial experience. Best-in-class content editorial tools. Robust rich media management for hi-res images and video formats. Our team implemented a 100% secure migration of all their data and legacy node pages to the new CMS. 99% errors reduced. 60% increase in new users. Read More

Challenge Undergoing a digital transformation, FFME needed to revamp its digital presence and make sure all its digital assets are integrated into one online brand network that can be efficiently and easily updated when required. Fitness First had challenges that required complex technologies and solutions - they thoroughly reviewed all available options to address these issues. Drupal was selected as the ideal CMS and technology to support its short and long-term digital strategy objectives. Solution Seven websites are personalized and managed by one centralized CMS. All websites will share branding and design systems but will retain personalization capabilities for each website audience. Drupal allows for seamless integration with business-critical custom solutions that Fitness First Middle East required. Solutions and tools such as Fisikial, MemberFirst, and Eloqua. Drupal allows multiple teams to upload, personalize, and manage content faster and better than before thanks to the built-in streamlined publishing process. Reliable hosting and superior infrastructure allow auto-scaling and continuous upgrades, faster content delivery, and implementation of best practices. Results We reorganized the website layout for a more complex grid system for better utilization of spaces The new Fitness First Drupal 8 website features the all-new and powerful layout builder. Layout Builder is a visual design tool. It can be used to create custom layouts for content types, individual entities, and more. Drupal 8's Layout Builder allows content editors and site builders to easily and quickly create visual layouts for displaying content. Read More

Challenge Al Bawaba contacted Vardot to rebuild and revamp their digital experience in a bid to solidify their reputation as the most pioneering digital news and entertainment network in the Middle East and North Africa region. Being the largest independent digital news and media platform naturally demands that Al Bawaba needed a robust digital asset management solution that enables technical scalability. They intended to continue on growing their already sizeable content and reach much higher volumes of multimedia content. Solution In a bid to create a more dynamic experience for the readers of Al Bawaba; we implemented Layout Builder. Layout Builder is unique in that it can work with structured and unstructured content, and with templated and free-form pages. In the process of upgrading Al Bawaba to Drupal 8; we replaced their Drupal 6 Entity browser with an upgraded and customizable media library that enables content publishers, editors, and/or admins to manage and access digital assets (videos, images, and etc.) easier than ever. We utilized OpenCalais (provided by Thomson Reuters) so that Al Bawaba is able to publish articles with automatically generated tags relevant to the article. Results Awarded the runner-up award in the International Splash Awards 2019 - Best Media, News, and Entertainment Drupal Website. 300% increase in comment engagement, with a focus on News. 25% increase in freelance submissions from journalists in the UK and USA and 12% increase in PR submissions to Al Bawaba Business Increasing requests for partnerships from US and UK tech and media events and programs. Read More

Challenge ProEquest is a single, easy-to-use members-only site that helps you find everything from your perfect horse to the latest news that matters to you. ProEquest eliminates irrelevant sale horse posts from unproven sources, the need to sift through endless listings, and the tedious process of spreading the word about your horses and services one person at a time. ProEquest needed to upgrade its website from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8's latest tech, solutions, modules, and features in order to revamp the digital experience they are promising its users. Solution Migration: Migrate all data and content for the platform Integrate Secure E-Commerce: ProEquest needed to integrate a secure and user-friendly payment procedure (authorize.net) Mobile-First: To optimize the benefit from the enhanced features and solutions that Drupal 8 offers a mobile-first digital experience for users. Advanced Search: To create a powerful search engine that is for the users and content of the platform. Users must be able to save their preferred search criteria in order to receive relevant alerts regarding their search. Search Engine Optimized: The new marketplace would focus on content marketing for the specific target audience that needs to be reached. Hence, a blog was introduced which makes SEO an essential aspect of marketing efforts. Results ProEquest eliminates irrelevant sale horse posts from unproven sources, the need to sift through endless listings, and the tedious process of spreading the word about your horses and services one person at a time. Read More

Challenge The American School of Dubai was looking for a rich user experience with an updated responsive design, theming, user-friendly navigation, and a clear site structure. The new ASD website is meant to feature a robust news/story manager that can filter by themes and categories and include the voices of various constituents. The ASD Website has a primary goal to appeal to and provide information to its audience members. The main audience members will have dedicated landing pages to provide them with a hub of information in one place. Solution The Drupal 8 website was built on top of Varbase CMS - which gives them the ability to publish multilingual content for a diverse range of website visitors and more importantly their target audience of the aforementioned users. Based on the identified and agreed-upon roles - a preconfigured revision control process was automated for all content types and entities. ASD’s new website features a sitewide search engine with advanced search capabilities thanks to the implementation of the Apache Solr search system. Results Publishing content using Varbase allowed them to enjoy a seamless content publishing and moderation process with tiered roles and permissions for different levels of access (i.e.) admin, editor, publisher, and viewer. Vardot launched the website SSL enabled and continues to monitor the status of security to implement any required upgrades. A full and extensive On-Site SEO performance checklist tool was featured to enable them to create landing pages optimized for search engines. Read More

Challenge The legacy ACS website was visually unappealing, poorly structured from a content point of view, and had a difficult-to-manage CMS. These factors combined make the site confusing for users and time-consuming for administrators to upload or edit content. In addition, the site was slow to load and had no SEO optimization, which negatively impacted their ranking. Vardot was chosen to build a new website aligned with ACS's key strategic goals of increased engagement and improved communication of its mission and programs. Partnering with the ACS project team, Vardot rebuilt the website from scratch and made improvements in a range of key areas. Solution Vardot approached this challenge from the top down by completing a new sitemap to provide a content structure aligned with the ACS's objectives and user needs. Their existing content was then reworked into more consistent and accessible layouts to enhance their community's experience. To help achieve the goal of improved audience engagement, parent and student portals were added to promote dialogue with these core communities. Parents are now able to access community directories, calendars, reports, and newsletters while students have access to e-learning support. In addition, easy-to-find pages with seamless links to third-party school applications and donation platforms were included in the new build. Results With greatly improved user experiences for their community and their own internal teams, the ACS is set up with a web presence that will facilitate their growth and engagement with key communities from parents to students, government stakeholders, and donors. Read More

Challenge Cities Alliance is a global partnership fighting urban poverty and supporting cities to deliver sustainable development. To manage its activities, the Cities Alliance operates a multi-donor fund with UNOPS as host and Trustee. The UNOPS retained Vardot’s support and maintenance services in a bid to enhance the quality of performance, functionality, and usability of the Cities Alliance digital platform. Solution The new design also features accessibility best practices that ensure that all website visitors can access the website in the intended fashion from any device or browser without any frustrations when it comes to page loading speed. The Cities Alliance website is a content-heavy digital platform with a myriad of content formats, ranging from news articles to publications and rich media formats such as video. Our team upgraded and improved the in-site search capabilities to ensure that website visitors can navigate the content on the site easier and quicker than ever before. Results Upgrade site functionality to create a dynamic user experience for website visitors Update modules and features to provide full flexibility for the website management team Sustain website performance regardless of traffic or content load Enhance content publishing experience for website content marketing team Ensure responsiveness across all browsers and screen size Read More

Challenge ICARDA is an international organization undertaking research for development. They provide innovative, science-based solutions for countries across non-tropical dry areas. The research aims to reduce poverty and enhance food, water, and nutritional security, and environmental health, in the face of global challenges, including climate change. To achieve its strategic goals and ensure that its message is optimally distributed across the relevant channels; ICARDA needed to choose the ideal CMS that enables a content-heavy website to deliver a secure and engaging user experience for its target audiences across all platforms. Solution ICARDA runs a massive global network and needs to update its website content as timely as possible. Such content would include: Vacancies Employees and Experts Publications Projects Donors Regional Offices (New offices and their updates) Vardot built the new Drupal website enabled with Feeds integration; which means that ICARDA is now able to auto-update the content as mentioned above across the globe. Using frequent cron jobs, no update goes missing or without publishing. Results 99% errors reduced. Thanks to the Domains module; ICARDA’s team can now develop dynamic microsites for any of their temporary projects without the need for technical knowledge or expertise. ICARDA can build all the microsites they want for free using preset and predefined UI configurations. No need to commission the services of a web development agency to make one each time a project requires one. Media management for those microsites will be centralized from the Drupal CMS and all microsites share the same database with access provided based on permissions. Read More

Challenge By Vardot on 8 April 2020, The Independent Election Commission was established in 2011 as an independent body concerned with managing and supervising the electoral process without interference or influence from any party. The commission is one of the fruits of political reform in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan led by His Majesty King Abdullah II, and it reflects the official establishment’s response to popular demands. The IEC needed a powerful enterprise-level CMS that enables full digital content publishing and editing while guaranteeing on-site search engine optimization. Solution An interactive mapping system that displays dynamic maps of electoral districts and centers was introduced to the website as a novel feature to enrich the user experience of different target audiences. We also used the Poll module to enable the IEC to gather critical data from their users through online surveys easily manipulated by their marketing team. The results would be automatically displayed to ensure maximum transparency. Results Building the new website using Varbase was a strategic decision due to the fact that Varbase is packed with all the core features and essential modules you’d look for in a digital platform and as such we were able to spend less time building the website’s core features and our efforts were more focused on custom module development. Read More

Challenge Clients were looking to build a CMS for donation landing pages. Vardot helped clients create a platform that facilitates building landing pages and emergency sites to fundraise in global markets. This system can be customized according to the local behavior in the different markets that we serve. Solution We worked on a Sprint model, doing batch releases and testing in parallel while continuing with the development. Eventually, Vardot started providing clients with other solutions for the unforeseen challenges that normally arise during development projects. Results Vardot helped clients create a platform that facilitates building landing pages and emergency sites to fundraise in global markets. This system can be customized according to the local behavior in the different markets that we serve. After launching the platform, we moved onto the second phase of the project, and we’re also working on other projects in parallel. Thus, Vardot helped clients integrate the third-party payment system into their platform, so users are redirected to the payment app without even noticing. It was a very seamless implementation. Read More

Challenge The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) is the only global network dedicated to the study and eradication of lung cancer and other thoracic malignancies. Since its founding in 1974, the association’s membership has grown to more than 8,000 lung and thoracic cancer specialists from all disciplines and more than 100 countries. The IASLC website is a valuable resource but required a revamp in a bid to raise the standards of accessibility, user experience, and content management. They partnered with Vardot to rebuild their website into a Drupal 8 digital experience and platform powered by Varbase. Solution The fact that we built the new IASLC Drupal website on Varbase meant that we can deliver the project in record time; as Varbase is already packed with 100+ features and modules essential to the modern enterprise-grade digital experience. All the best practices and standards regarding security, accessibility, and user experience are already up to date due to the ongoing support and maintenance that Varbase goes through. Results Key Results 99% reduced on-site SEO errors 100% safe migration of 1,500+ notes 1 CMS for future microsites Future Growth Ability to integrate an LMS in order to hold virtual sessions, meeting, and events. IASLC now has the capability to upgrade to Drupal 9 when needed easily thanks to their migration to Drupal 8. IASLC now enjoys content translation capabilities should they choose to engage a wider and global audience of users. Multisite Functionality - IASLC can now build microsites for their events, meetings, and conferences when required. All created microsites are managed centrally by the same CMS, Varbase. Advanced Content Management Mobile-first UX design Read More

Challenge In terms of overall technology and solutions, these were less than optimal. The old MSF CMS was built on Drupal 7, so was nearing the end of its lifespan. In addition, the site was hosted on a non-Drupal compliant server which led to performance degradation over time. The site itself had areas that needed improvement such as the inability of the editorial team to update content or create pages without needing developer help. The donation system was also separate, very specialized, and not easy to update. Finally, the UX/UI needed to be more responsive and more on-page SEO made possible. Solution Vardot was initially awarded a support and maintenance contract for the old site in 2018. After providing excellent service, we were given the go-ahead to do a full site audit. We found that MSF needed a responsive, multilingual site with an integrated donations platform to further its funding potential, marketing efforts, and knowledge sharing objectives. The audit outcomes led to this project which covered: Hosting and content migration UX/UI redesign Integration of donations platform Rebuild of a new site on Drupal 9 Results Key Functionality A fully customized native Drupal donation system was integrated into the CMS, with multi-currency support to maximize the ease of potential donations. State of the art editorial tools, Layout Builder for easy drag and drop page creation by any non-technical team member. Content from the old site was mapped to the Information Architecture and migrated entirely with a simple RSS feed. Upgrades to cloud hosting for top-level ISO security compliance and to Drupal 9 for CMS longevity. Read More

Challenge The site needed to be a user-friendly, responsive umbrella platform for content pulled from over 25 affiliate sites. Using only open source technology, Vardot built State Newsroom a news site with intuitive user experience and search functionality, as well as fully automated categorization and tagging capabilities. Solution Key Functionality Customized RSS feed module for the real-time importing of bulk content from over 25 affiliate sites OpenCalais, a semantic web service that uses Natural Language Processing for advanced categorization and tagging Solr Search, a hyper-fast, enterprise-grade search platform Robust Hosting Fully customized administrator back end that could be easily updated with no technical expertise. Results With a complimentary selection of advanced open source solutions, States Newsroom is set up with a scalable enterprise-grade news site that can continue their goal of providing high-quality state reporting and excellent user experiences. Read More