Website Transformation to improve Accessibility and Responsiveness for a Leading European Knowledge Institution.
Overview.
Client is the national library for an European nation and is one of the largest libraries in the world. The library’s collections include more than 170 million items, in over 400 languages. Clients’ website is used by a wide range of user groups including researchers, scholars and public. Client had a vision to modernize their website so that it is more efficient, user friendly and scalable.
Our client was facing website usability challenges due to outdated legacy code and a complicated user interface, resulting in poor user experience. The site wasn’t meeting accessibility standards.
Solution.
Coforge embarked on a transformative journey implementing a headless architecture that significantly improved accessibility and performance. Our strategy involved using Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS) and React JS, transforming the legacy code into a white-labelled, AA level accessibility compliant website. We also introduced a responsive design and a phased implementation approach, allowing both the new and old websites to run in parallel.
The following website development stages were planned and executed:
Usage of Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS) for generating configurable JSON
Consumption of dynamic JSON through React JS
To retain SEO rankings, it was ensured that URLs of old and new website run in parallel. Custom JSS preview was developed by extending the vanilla Sitecore solution.
Legacy out-dated code was transformed to a white labelled website along with making the same AA level accessibility compliant.
Full User Experience (UX) design of all unique Sitecore templates to support different screen resolutions.
A responsive website was built supported by the single code base, replacing a separate legacy mobile website.
Both legacy and new accessibility were enabled to run in parallel to enable a phased rollout of the new website.
On-going component library was built along the development phases which was being reused in all the new web projects within the Library.
The Impact.
70,000+ pages were made Accessible and Responsive which were being used by around 8 million customers each year.
Overall website performance improved by 30-40% with Sitecore 9.2 & React 17. More than 150 Sitecore templates were being produced by a single fully flexible FE template which meant less cost to manage the website.
Approx. 50+ E2E reusable component library established for the client for future re-use
