LeadingAge
About LeadingAge
To expand the world of possibilities for aging, LeadingAge members and affiliates touch the lives of 4 million individuals, families, employees, and volunteers every day. The LeadingAge community (www.LeadingAge.org) includes 6,000 not-for-profit organizations in the United States, 39 state partners, hundreds of businesses, research partners, consumer organizations, foundations, and a broad global network of aging services organizations that reach over 30 countries.
The work of LeadingAge is focused on advocacy, education, and applied research. They promote home health, hospice, community-based services, senior housing, assisted living residences, continuing care communities, nursing homes as well as technology solutions and person-centered practices that support the overall health and wellbeing of seniors, children, and those with special needs.
The Challenge
LeadingAge (www.leadingage.org) needed a technology partner to help them refresh their site’s information architecture, graphic design, navigation, and content management functionality. When originally developed, the LeadingAge site had been built without fully utilizing the inherent functionality of the Ektron CMS which powered it: there was little to no workflow, content entry was cumbersome and not standardized, and the site was rife with “Link Farms” without taking advantage of the robust Ektron search to access content.
The Solution
Hodgson began the LeadingAge project by conducting a thorough audit and assessment of www.aahsa.org (their former website), including production of a new information architecture, analysis of site user goals, and an in-depth SEO analysis with keyword recommendations.
Hodgson was able to utilize the results of the audit and assessment, as well as LeadingAge’s rebranding efforts, to produce a new look and feel for their website by creating a site interface that highlights, organizes, and displays content in a user-friendly and easy-to-access manner.
In developing the Ektron CMS, Hodgson utilized Taxonomy tagging for improving content organization and the speed at which search results are returned. In addition, Hodgson eliminated the link farms by organizing content under these headings: Sections, Sub-Sections, and Articles. This development process also allowed us to take full advantage of the capabilities of Ektron’s powerful site search.
After developing the above functionalities, Hodgson was able to automate the process through which LeadingAge creates their weekly and monthly newsletters; this automation was built into the site. Hodgson developers also created smart forms in Ektron to allow for easy entry of content by LeadingAge content providers.
Hodgson utilized a project manager, online marketing experts, and information architect / content strategist, a DBA, a designer, developers, and a QA / QC resource over a period of twelve months to assess, redesign, develop, and integrate LeadingAge’s web properties.