The Education Review Office
Developing and providing robust evidence and insights to shape education practices in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Background
To get insights into the hands of educators across New Zealand, ERO decided to develop a website, accessible to educators, housing the ERO’s evidence alongside localised international data from the EEF through the International Evidence Toolkit API feed.
A key role of the Education Review Office (ERO) Te Tari Arotake Mātauranga is developing and providing robust evidence and insights to shape education practices in New Zealand. To support education improvement and best practice, ERO is integrating New Zealand evidence with the latest international insights - in collaboration with the UK-based Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).
While aiming for a user-friendly information architecture, ERO recognised the need to focus on tasks of their target audience.
The website had to be visually aligned with and adhere to ERO’s overall brand guidelines while ensuring easy navigation to and from the parent site. The challenge was to create a separate but cohesive website tailored to a distinct audience while maintaining a seamless connection to the main ERO website.
Solution
Our comprehensive approach defined our clients' goals in the project to help us in designing the right solution.
Through an analysis of the business objectives and user testing with prototypes, we were able to design it with an intuitive user experience in mind. Our process ensured the website felt distinct while remaining part of ERO’s core brand.
In terms of functionality, we developed a suite of content blocks and templates to give ERO content authors full control and flexibility. We developed a real-time integration with the Education Endowment Foundation to ingest the latest international evidence into the site. A core part of the development was the creation of a document library to host ERO’s over 10 years of reports, guides, and other materials. This was developed to allow users easy navigation through filtering, search, and the ability to read documents online or via PDF. At the core of all our development was ensuring we met Government Accessibility Standards.
Security and performance were also front of mind, so the site was developed using the latest version of Umbraco CMS and hosted with Umbraco Cloud, which takes advantage of the benefits of Microsoft Azure and Cloudflare’s CDN.
Impact
Our collaborative efforts resulted in a multifaceted website that aligns seamlessly with the ERO brand.
The website offers an easy-to-navigate structure, prioritising the top tasks for educators. The inclusion of standard components like pull quotes, CTAs, image galleries, and toolkits that feed pages enhances the overall user experience.
We successfully implemented PDF conformity, Google Analytics, and XML sitemap integration to boost visibility and accessibility. We have hosted on Umbraco Cloud, with the launch of the website, we have also conducted standard security testing and SEO reviews, ensuring optimal performance.
Since its launch, the site has garnered praise from users and project stakeholders alike for its clean design and user-friendly interface, making information easy to find. Content managers have also celebrated its simplicity in updating and publishing content.
Thanks to Umbraco Cloud, maintaining and managing the site has become a breeze. Updates and patches are swiftly applied with minimal effort, ensuring the site consistently runs on the latest Umbraco version, thus guaranteeing optimal performance.
