Under contract with Digicon Corporation, Ignition72 had the opportunity to design and build a new City Schools website that welcomes all users on any device to a visually positive and robust new website. This site includes important tools like the School Comparison, where kids and parents can explore various school options. We had to ensure that the site was multi-lingual and accessible, while empowering the School District to manage, control and update all aspects of the site.  

Learning + planning

Planning involved a detailed landscape analysis, including Google Analytics data, stakeholder outreach, surveys, user testing as well as an iterative planning review with all internal City School stakeholders. Audiences and their goals were defined, content mapped, functionality documented and wireframes generated to ensure that the City Schools team considered every possibility before settling on the best solution.

Style exploration

The new City Schools website is clean and clear, with bright primary color splashes to deliver a fresh and modern message, as well as appeal to students. Photography is very upbeat and positive, always showcasing a City Schools community member. Throughout the site color is brought in to draw the eye, but also to create an overwhelmingly positive user experience.

Design + development

Tailoring the design to our specific audience was very important, so we held multiple user feedback sessions early in the design phase. Walking community members through static layouts and clickable prototypes helped us reaffirm and tweak some of our design decisions.

The site was designed from scratch to be a new Drupal 8 powered system.

The new site launched in January 2019 and within the first month it had over 179K users visit the site over 378K times, spending 2:24 minutes on site, and viewing an average of 2.9 pages per visit. Compared with this time last year this is an increase of 195% in overall traffic, a 114% increase in average time on site and  a 198% increase in page views. The bounce rate, or number of people who leave from the first page in less than a minute, dropped by over 112%.

The new site includes robust Google Analytics facilitated through Google Tag manager, so we have granular data relating to everything that happens on the new site.

The final site is hosted by our partners the Digicon Corporation.

You don’t have to ever been to DC to have heard about the traffic: the gridlock is legendary. To help, Transurban developed the 495/95 Express Lanes: A pay as you go system of toll roads that can alleviate the crush in both directions, every day of the week. But managing the process was proving tricky: Fines and notifications were issued by mail, often taking weeks to resolve. Customers had limited access to live information including costs, live video and other resources to help them better plan their journeys.

Collaboration

Ignition72 worked with the Transurban team to put in place a back-office API connection which culminates in an iOS/Android Native app. Users can register, track their tolls, access live travel information, maps and more. This means you no longer need an EZ Pass to use the toll roads, and the best information is always at your finger-tips.

The app has been in use and we have built a few marketing videos for them too.

Every year tens of thousands of building and land environmental reports are created to answer specific questions or facilitate sales and other transactions. In the past, these reports existed on paper and were cast away after they were consumed, meaning that the next owner would have to start from scratch: losing the knowledge and context, as well as continuity, that the previous reports could provide.

Ignition72 worked closely with the NESAD team to create a custom system and process that would interconnect environmental assessment companies around the country. The System: A massive database of reports that is searchable using Google Maps (address, lat/long, etc) to determine whether any existing reports exist, what type etc. Integrated into the mapping system is the ability to order updated or even new reports from the environmental teams who know the site, have the equity and the experience.

Ignition72 worked closely with the NESAD team to create a custom system and process that would interconnect environmental assessment companies around the country.

The Houston Independent School District has many websites, including one for each school. These thousands of pages exist within a fixed and rigid template, ensuring that all schools operate on an even field, with the same tools and resources. While this works for the overwhelming majority of HISD’s needs, District wide programs like the Continuing & Technical Education program (CTE) do not fit into the same template as a high school.

HISD met with the Ignition72 Strategy team, and we planned a best practice WordPress deployment, utilizing custom themes to showcase the incredible projects, situations and opportunities the HISD CTE Program represents. CTE Staff were trained to manage and control the site, making their online presence aspirational, nimble and focused.

It worked so well the rest of the district is jealous and making them take down the site!

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