EMTA

Rebuild on Umbraco CMS

Redesign and migration of content-rich, membership-protected web portal to Umbraco CMS.

Challenge

Redesign the website and migrate tens of thousands of pieces of protected content from an outdated CMS to a new, cost effective platform.

Solution

CMS platform analysis and selection
UX/UI redesign
Scripted content migration

Background

EMTA, Inc. is a non-profit trade association based in New York City, formed to provide information on emerging markets to its member organizations. EMTA's primary member base is financial institutions (large banks and trading firms) that are seeking information on the economic happenings of a particular geographical area in the emerging market. To facilitate this knowledge transfer, EMTA members have access to a wealth of content behind a login-protected section of their website.

The website for EMTA was built using Ektron CMS. Having served its members very well for years, it had become apparent that the time for an upgrade had arrived; the CMS was no longer being supported and security risks from an older server configuration were becoming more of a concern. Furthermore, the website design was outdated and provided a poor mobile experience. EMTA needed a solution to bring its content library up to current standards and be positioned to continue to serve their growing member base.

Before

Out-dated and not easily accessible on mobile devices, the EMTA website was in need of some help.

After

With a modern and responsive design, the new EMTA provides a rich user experience focused on clear navigation and intuitive architecture.

Creating a Blueprint

Through our discovery process, the challenges of this initiative came into focus:

Select a CMS that would provide the functionality needed without breaking the bank
Automate the migration of thousands of pieces of content
Integrate with a backend association management system, NetForum
Redesign the website with a focus on accessibility and ease of use

Through several discussions with our strategy team, it became apparent that EMTA needed a secure, affordable, easy-to-use, and easy-to-maintain CMS that would allow their team to continue to publish protected content. Umbraco Cloud emerged as the clear choice. With its focus on flexibility and a great editing experience, and with the support and ongoing maintenance offered in a managed cloud configuration, we knew we could build the exact solution needed by EMTA, within budget, to set their team up for success. In addition, Umbraco’s open source flexibility meant our development team could build a custom integration with NetForum to authenticate EMTA’s members.

Leveraging the Umbraco Accelerator

As with any website rebuild on a CMS platform, there is substantial effort needed to create new page templates and design systems. While this portion of the project alone can be very time (and budget) consuming, we were able to take advantage of our own starter kit, Accelerate for Umbraco, to kick start the project and lay the foundation for a modern, accessible and responsive website design. With some customizations by our design team to match EMTA’s brand and style guidelines, we were able to quickly get a site up and running with a modern layout, fully responsive for all screen sizes, and intuitive navigation and information architecture.

Scripted Content Migration

With thousands of pages of content, EMTA’s staff was not equipped to manage a manual migration, nor was there budget to pay a third party to move the content. Instead, with our longstanding expertise in Ektron and a team of .NET programmers ready for the challenge, we created a scripted content migration solution to automatically import each piece of content directly from Ektron into Umbraco. With the bulk of the effort handled programmatically, the team could focus on the far simpler task of content remediation and making sure any legacy content formatting issues were corrected to match the new site.

Cloud Configuration

Having come from an environment where the CMS became deprecated with security updates and bug fixes no longer available, moving to the Umbraco Cloud was an easy choice to solve EMTA’s concerns. This managed service automatically takes care of all security updates and bug fixes, ensuring the platform is up to date, stable and secure, and most importantly, providing peace of mind.

NetForum Integration

Through a custom integration between the Umbraco Membership Provider and EMTA’s NetForum application, the website provides single sign on authentication to give access to a library of valuable market information for members. The login functionality is tied directly to EMTA’s NetForum system to authenticate users. Should there be an issue with the NetForum service, the site will automatically refer to a local membership database, imported from NetForum, to complete the authentication. Custom reports and emails are generated to alert EMTA administrators in the event of a service interruption.

Ongoing Success

Once a project is completed, the work is never done. Now engaged in a monthly retainer, our team is continuing to partner with EMTA to build on the success of the new website and ensure that EMTA is able to serve its membership with the finest digital experience for years to come.

Have you upgraded your Umbraco website?

Umbraco 7 end-of-life is here so what should you do? Schedule a call with us and we’ll give you practical advice on the upgrade process, a high-level roadmap, and transparent budget and cost considerations tailored to your project.