An Improved user experience comprising multilingual components, and focused on speed and strategic objectives
UNRWA and Vardot collaborated to redesign and redevelop the agency’s website so that it could more efficiently provide outstanding service for refugees. The project’s principal objective was to build a platform capable of logically distributing news and press releases, multimedia resources, and program information while simultaneously reaching the agency’s broad range of target audiences.
Although UNRWA’s source website—last redeveloped in 2009 on a PHP/MySQL platform—provided users with plenty of resources, it lacked a coherent structure and hierarchy; this limited user accessibility and made it particularly ineffective with regards to distributing crucial information in an effective manner to appropriate audiences. Additionally, as the agency’s target audiences speak a variety of languages (most notably English and Arabic) UNRWA needed a CMS with ample multilingual support.
This made Drupal an ideal choice for UNRWA’s digital needs: it’s an open source CMS with the ability to handle a large number of pages, content types, and permission levels while simultaneously affording flexibility and ease of use for users and editors to contribute. Additional factors include the nonexistence of a license fee and an extensive reservoir of dynamic modules that are both built and actively maintained by the Drupal community and Vardot .
"Two years ago, we’ve selected Vardot to revamp and help us maintain our website and it’s a selection that we have been very happy about ever since.
Vardot has an exceptional professional team that is abreast of the latest innovations in web design and development and that has been very apt at helping us find solutions to our web communications needs." Sami Mshasha, Chief of Communications, Spokesperson | UNRWA
The requirements to meet the project’s goal of significantly improving the user experience were:
In September 2013, Vardot delivered UNRWA a fully scalable website built on Drupal 7 with SEO enhancements in place to increase search-indexing and search engine visibility.
Shortly after its launch, UNRWA’s new website was immediately put to the test, as the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict resulted in unprecedented numbers of visitors seeking out the agency online. From May to September of 2014, UNRWA experienced an uptick of nearly 60% in website traffic per month. Additionally, UNRWA’s website experienced a 50% increase in donations—before launching, donations amounted to roughly 5% of all website traffic, and that number rose to 10%.
The multilingual website was constructed expressly to meet increased traffic in times of emergency and the possibility of an overload of donations.
The website currently ranks in the top 1,500 in Jordan and in the top 600 in the Palestinian Territories, meaning UNRWA’s redesigned website is reaching its desired beneficiary audience.
And to this day, UNRWA continues to work with Vardot to ensure that its performance never lags and that it is always cutting-edge.
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