Noorderpoort

An Umbraco 9 solution integrated with uSync and Umbraco Forms 🚀

About Noorderpoort

Noorderpoort is a regional training center with various locations in the provinces of Groningen and Drenthe in the Nederlands. The school was established in 1996 when fourteen secondary and adult schools merged, and four more schools were added in 1998 and 2000, including a secondary school.

Noorderpoort has approximately 14,000 MBO students and more than 1,400 employees. The training center provides secondary vocational education, secondary general adult education, language and integration courses, and courses for adults. The school has 20 domains, with 173 courses on 7 locations in the North of the Netherlands.

How it all started 

The Noorderpoort organization is in transition and that includes a new website. Where the previous website mainly focused on the target group of students, 3 target groups have now been chosen: students, adults (people who work somewhere and want and need to continue to develop), and companies. Simultaneously with the new reality, there was a technical challenge where the Umbraco 7 platform had to be updated to a new version in order to improve flexibility and maintainability. A challenge here was the relatively short development time because there was a hard deadline on November 1, 2021, where the site had to go live due to a new way students have to register from now on.

The way to success...

...with Umbraco 9, uSync, Umbraco Forms, and the video package 🚀

In 2020, Noorderpoort took action and started the journey to a new identity by pursuing a new website. Noorderpoort decided to form a team with creative agency G2K and theFactor.e. From there, we started off with the formulation of a concept and design.

During this process we worked together to, on the one hand, form a new identity that fits the new target groups and on the other hand could work digitally. And, why not build it in the new Umbraco 9, which was not released at that time yet? 

In close contact with Umbraco, it was decided that, given the deadline of November 1, 2021, Umbraco 9 could be deployed. This was also at the request of the customer who wanted to build the new site on the latest version of Umbraco.

The deadline of November 1 was extra important for the customer because a new national method of registration came into effect on that date and the site had to be ready for it.

Due to the short construction period, we always looked at how we could enable Noorderpoort to start working with the content during the construction process. This was successful and the deadline was met.

Packages we used specifically for this case are: uSync, Umbraco Forms, and the video package. H5YR!

Post-launch joys

At the moment it is still too early to describe all KPIs. What we do know is that the website is much better suited to the new target groups and that it has been responded to with great enthusiasm. The performance has also improved and the content managers are much freer to place their content. Furthermore, the new site features much more video and is optimized for SEO purposes. Finally, it is linked to the CRM system - a minimum requirement from a marketing-driven perspective.

✅ A website that fits within the new identity of Noorderpoort

✅ A website that matches the relatively new target groups and goals

✅ The latest Umbraco version, version 9, has been used - it is easier for the customer to make adjustments

✅ The dependence on the technical supplier has decreased

✅ The site is much faster in the front and backend

✅ A website that is ready for larger online marketing campaigns