Putting the spotlight on Sydney as a Global Event Destination
- UX research
- Visual Design
- Web development
- Hosting
- Support
How do you create a future-proofed website to showcase one of the world’s greatest cities?
BESydney is a trusted not-for-profit organisation that promotes Sydney, Australia as the perfect destination for global meetings, conferences, and corporate events.
They collaborate with local leaders, industry, government and academia to bid for and showcase Sydney as a premier business destination. They also offer free professional services, funding, and support to international groups planning to host events in Sydney.
Calico has more than 20 years of experience building websites for Australian events organisations, so working with BESydney was a perfect match.
A time for digital transformation
Recognising the opportunity to enhance their online presence and invest in technology, BESydney initially engaged Calico to upgrade their website from Umbraco 7 to Umbraco 10. They were especially keen to have a website that could support the creation of self-service tools for small event organisers.
After discussions with Calico, BESydney realised that their existing website design could use a modern refresh, and decided to not only upgrade to Umbraco 10, but to entirely redesign and redevelop their website with Calico helping to drive the new visual direction. Calico would build BESydney a brand new website, a digital transformation that would incorporate their new brand identity and serve as a strong foundation for future projects, including the creation of self-service tools.
The right UX and design solution
As BESydney services a niche group of clients, it was imperative that Calico understood these users well. Calico performed ‘treejack’ testing to clarify how BESydney’s users would respond to a new information architecture for the website, and these testing results confirmed how to best serve their audience. The result was three main sections of the site for BESydney’s three groups of offerings, which were also reflected as key pathways on the homepage.
After the information architecture was established, the website experienced a complete visual overhaul with fresh designs, which now showcase the vibrancy of Sydney with the addition of large-scale imagery. Calico also worked with BESydney to extend their new brand identity and make it more effective for digital delivery.
Additionally, Calico worked closely with BESydney to plan and implement improvements to their Supplier Search, which now utilises intuitive filters relevant to different supplier types, allowing the user to effectively narrow their search.
The right technology solutions
In addition to the English version of the new BESydney website, BESydney was also keen to create a similar website for the Chinese market. This Chinese version needed to be lightweight, to have customisable navigation and page content, and the site’s files needed to be hosted in China.
Calico’s solution was utilising a package for the Umbraco CMS called xStatic, which allows for the creation of static websites, using Umbraco to house the content. After extending the package to meet BESydney’s needs, Calico were able to set up a basic publishing workflow capable of automatically building and deploying site changes to an Azure-hosted repository, which is then able to be consumed by the Chinese web host.
BESydney is an organisation with a complex Salesforce set-up which needed to integrate seamlessly with the new website and hook into many aspects of their marketing automation journeys. The website needed to reference Salesforce often for BESydney’s supplier and ambassador data, and also make sure that all form and enquiry information was being sent back to Salesforce. Additionally, while almost all of this data came from Salesforce, CMS users also needed the ability to override certain fields.
In order to fulfil all of these requirements, Calico set up various automations during the import process to assist with the automatic structure creation and deletion of data, so that the user experience on the frontend would be accurate and seamless. By carefully planning out the site structure prior to starting the website build, we were able to come up with a holistic solution that met BESydney’s needs and ensured the data on the website was always up to date with their Salesforce CRM.
Visit the BESydney site now to discover the full experience Calico developed.
