English
Hippo, the company setting new standards for how Commercial Open Source Enterprise Web Content Management can empower audiences and change the way organizations manage Web content is pleased to announce that The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs has selected Hippo CMS to power their main website at http://www.minbuza.nl.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promotes the interests of the Kingdom abroad. The Ministry coordinates and carries out Dutch foreign policy at its headquarters in The Hague and through its missions abroad. It is likewise the channel through which the Dutch Government communicates with foreign governments and international organisations.
The Netherlands is committed to building a safe, stable and prosperous world. In The Hague, and at more than 150 embassies and consulates worldwide, staff are actively involved in addressing issues such as poverty reduction, climate change, respect for human rights and the rule of law and eliminating conflict. The Ministry’s expert staff serves Dutch citizens, businesses and institutions in over 150 cities all over the world and in The Hague.
The ministry’s web presence is one of its primary communication vehicles and is an incredibly important part of its overall mission. The ministry has recently consolidated and migrated their web content platform onto Hippo CMS.
A Big Challenge – Consolidate Multiple Sites While Improving Performance
The Ministry faced a large challenge. With more than 150 embassy and consulate web-sites each in a variety of five different languages (Dutch, English, German, French and Spanish) – the organization required a solution that would help consolidate these sites under a single web content management solution. Additionally, the Ministry required a solution that would allow them to expand their web content into other languages including Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. And finally, because 150 sites would be consolidated, the government organization highly desired a solution that would improve their existing navigational methods – as well as improve their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.
The Solution – Simpler Infrastructure & Much Improved Performance
Hippo CMS and the advantage of its Context Aware Server was the key to The Ministry’s success. The Hippo services team worked with The Ministry to accomplish a complete solution for the new web content platform.
– From 150 embassy and consulate web sites – to 1 site. The team migrated all of the different and multi-lingual web sites and more than 25,000 documents into a singular web content platform – that saves tremendous costs on rolling out new languages, designs and effort for content management.
– Added new languages to the platform. 15 new languages are now included across the site, including non-western character-based languages such as Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
– New navigational framework and faceted search. Using Hippos Context Aware server – the navigation now automatically optimizes based on traffic into the site – including a faceted search that helps keep the navigation consistent across the entire scope of the website.
– Doubled speed of the site – SEO optimized. In a “before-and-after” snapshot of the website – adding Hippo CMS and optimizing the content through Hippo’s delivery platform has more than doubled the speed of the site.
Great Results – Less Costs & Better Performance
The results have been tremendously helpful for the Ministry in their effort to both save expense, and optimize their results. “Our mission is to represent and serve the Dutch citizens, businesses and institutions in more than 150 cities all across the world. Our website is a direct reflection of that mission,” said Gerco Broekstra, Webcoordinator of The Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Moving to Hippo CMS has enabled us to both double the performance of our site for search engines, while consolidating it into one easy-to-use system. This helps us communicate faster and much more efficiently. We’re very happy to have standardized on the Hippo CMS platform.”
The overall results include a much more expanded web presence in new languages. This gives the Ministry a much greater global reach than it had previously with their old web content management system. Additionally, the new Hippo CMS more than doubled the speed of the web site, resulting in the Ministry’s site now appearing on the front page of Google for many of their top keywords and key phrases. The new faceted navigation optimizes the experience for the user no matter if they come in from a de-centralized access point (e.g. a consulate site) or from the highest level of the main site. The new CMS is also much easier and, for the first time ever, a single system supports their large 185-strong web team. And because it’s consolidated on one system – not only have their training and ongoing management decreased, but the infrastructure they need to serve their new consolidated platform has a reduced footprint as well.
Indeed, Hippo CMS has become good policy for the Ministry’s mission.
