Raising the Standards of Accessibility for the Study of Lung Cancer

Highly accessible and personalized experiences, catering to the unique needs of various audiences.

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IASLC Case Study Header

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.

99%

Reduced On-Site SEO Errors

100%

Safe Migration for 1,500+ Nodes

1

CMS for Future Micro Sites

Value and Impact

The value and Impact of IASLC are not showcased from the main site. The relevant content that each targeted audience needed wasn't strategically presented.

The stakeholders' priority was to showcase the true value of the work done by the IASLC and to present their value in the form of the various journals, research, studies, events, and conferences they offer to their existing and newer members.

Silo Approach to Content Creation

Various departments and teams were responsible for content creation across IASLC's digital properties.

This approach led to relevant content not being linked with each other across websites.

The IASLC needed to become an interconnected network consisting of various domains and portals - regardless of the format of the content being published (i.e.) ebook, image, article, video, and any other relevant digital asset uploaded to the site.

Ranking Higher on Search Engines

Their legacy CMS - Microsoft powered DNN - wasn't the easiest backend to use for the non-technical staff responsible for content publishing on the site and for a small core team that can be a laborious task.

Almost every page on the website suffered from at least 50 SEO errors due to a lack of maintenance. 

The IASLC website needed to implement an SEO friendly content structure supported by on-site SEO best practices including the ability to search for content across all their microsites - a feature that wasn't available in their legacy website or CMS.

Website Structure and Sitemap

The website structure and navigation of the legacy IASLC website were not intuitive and as such, we had to address the glaring issue from the beginning.

Our UI/UX and digital marketing teams researched best practices and specific user journeys relevant to the target audience of the IASLC.

We used our findings to recommend the best approach towards restructuring the new IASLC Drupal website.

We started by proposing a clear and logical sitemap.

Engagement-driven UX Design

Retaining visitors was a challenge due to the lack of engaging content and the latest relevant UX features.

The homepage in particular needed to draw traffic to IASLC's most valuable features such as the Virtual Library, resources, and membership directory.

This meant that our UI/UX team needed to revamp the static design and transform the homepage and all key webpages into engaging dynamic landing pages to maximize conversion and engagement rates.

The Need for Speed

IASLC needed to upgrade their CMS and launch their new website quickly. That is why Varbase was an ideal CMS that fit their requirements.

The fact that Varbase (a Drupal 8/9 Distribution and CMS) was packed with 100+ essential modules and UX features meant that development hours were diminished by at least 200 hours.

Advanced Content Management

Best-In-Class Accessibility

Webpages and content published in compliance with accessibility best practices. The new IASLC website launched with a 90% accessibility score from IBM and Google.

API-driven Publishing

Relevant resources available for purchase and content from IASLC's other digital platforms can be seamlessly auto-published on the IASLC website through data feeds.

Roles and Permissions

The various team members involved in content creation enjoy a more seamless publishing process thanks to the content moderation feature built-in Varbase.

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Maintaining Content Integrity

Vardot successfully and securely migrated 1,500+ digital assets and node pages from both WordPress and Microsoft Dot Net Nuke (DNN). 

Maintaining the integrity of data being migrated successfully cannot be accomplished without a careful plan of data categorization and due diligence throughout the process to ensure that every content type and the digital asset is where it should be.

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IASLC UX Journeys

Optimized Content Structure

The simple transformation of their legacy menu and navigation to a user-centric structured menu provided the following benefits:

  • Categorized and clear content structure
  • Enhanced indexing when crawled by Google’s bots
  • Clear website visitor paths
  • Mobile-first UX design

We also revamped outdated design concepts and features to present IASLC as a dynamic and content-rich digital experience.

"A dramatic improvement over the pre-existing site. After the unveiling to specific committees, an outpouring of positive feedback was received."

 

Joy Curzio, President of Curzio Communications

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IASLC UX Design

Flexible Personalization Capabilities

The IASLC is a digital community of members and as such, it is expected to grow and scale.

IASLC's non-technical team now has the ability to use the Layout Builder feature built-in Varbase to easily create or personalize mobile-first web pages should the need to create custom user journeys in the future.

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IASLC Content Publishing

Enhanced SEO

Content creators and publishers at the IASLC can now upload content that is optimized for search engines thanks to the on-site SEO performance-boosting features built-in Varbase CMS.

The new Drupal 8/9 CMS and our team eliminated 99% of the on-site SEO errors; such as 4xx and schema.org-related errors that negatively impacted the IASLC's search engine performance and ranking.

Clear Path to Drupal 9: Growth and Scalability

The IASLC website is meant to be a digital community and is not expected to be static. The community will continue to evolve in features, grow in size, and will require ongoing support.

Being built on Varbase - the new Drupal 8 IASLC website will gain the following strategic advantages:

  • Flexibility for all future critical integrations that may be required such as an LMS solution for virtual events and meetings.
  • Ongoing updates and support to all their UX features.
  • Maintenance and upgrades 24/7 to all best practices and standards relevant to privacy, security, and accessibility.
  • The ability to build new microsites for their events while being managed by a centralized CMS.
  • Multilingual and content translation tools in Varbase enabling them to address wider audiences when needed.
  • Advanced on-site SEO for their website content.
  • A clear and easy upgrade path to the advanced features of Drupal 9.

Moving Forward: Microsite Building Capabilities

Having the new IASLC website being built on Varbase means that the IASLC now have the foundation needed to pursue their long-term digital objectives.

The IASLC will no longer need extensive rebuilds or a full-scale project to build microsites for their conferences and events thanks to the multisite functionality in Varbase and powered by Drupal.

All future microsites can be built in a fraction of the time required while sharing all the branded IASLC UX components that can be found in their existing Varbase CMS.