Luminary

With more than $9 billion in funds under management and over 100,000 members, NGS Super is the leading industry super fund for those in non-government education, mutual finance and community organisations in Australia.

NGS was looking for a platform that would provide security and stability, as well as empowering staff to be self-sufficient in maintaining the site.

NGS Super is a NGO-based fund organization platform which is operated by Kentico. Luminary helped them to improve their content services, design and UX, discovery, websites and hosting services.

The challenge

In the competitive and ever-changing landscape of superannuation, it’s critical for funds to have a digital platform that is laser-focused on the needs of members and nimble when it comes to maintenance and updates. So when NGS Super was looking to replatform its website, its primary criteria were stability, security and ease of content management. Following a comprehensive tender process, NGS appointed Luminary as its implementation partner and settled on Kentico as its platform of choice.

One of the key requirements of the new site – aside from the need to provide current and prospective fund members with a cutting edge user experience – was to allow NGS’s digital team to be far more self sufficient in maintaining the site. This had been a significant shortcoming of the pre-existing site, as much of it was hard coded, which could result in turnaround times of more than two weeks to make basic edits to an on-site form.

Quick stats

• 12,901 lines of code
• 19,996 files
• 40 hours of interviews

What Luminary Did

As NGS wanted a site that would be highly future-focused and adaptable to emerging tech, it was decided to build the site using the MVC development model. (For more on this, check out CTO Andy Thompson’s excellent explanation of MVC for the non-technical audience.) The project was also implemented using Agile project methodology, which allowed for a rapid delivery phase.

Discovery

Before the delivery phase commenced, the project kicked off with a rigorous discovery phase, conducted by Luminary and its UX partner OVO. The discovery phase involved around 40 hours of recorded interviews and numerous stakeholder workshops. During this stage of the project, every aspect of the site and the user experience was examined, from the information architecture (IA), to user flows and Hotjar sessions recording the way people use the site. One of the main findings was that much of the information visitors were seeking was buried deep within the site’s IA and was extremely difficult to find.

All of the insights from the usability testing were synthesized with stakeholder workshops to ensure that the outcome would meet and exceed the aims of the business as well as user expectations. This process resulted in a very detailed Experience Map, which would serve as the foundation for all design and development decisions.

Delivery

In line with the Agile delivery model, the project was conducted in fortnightly sprints, with a defined goal at the end of each sprint. The sitemap was re-engineered to split the audience into segments in order to better meet the needs of the various personas. Componentised design within Kentico was also implemented to resolve the issue of over-dependency on developers and long turnaround times on site changes. Greater maintenance efficiencies were also achieved throughout the site by automating data updates to reduce the need for manual intervention and the risk of human error. A digital style guide was also produced to standardise future design and front-end maintenance to the site.

Laura Wright, CEO of NGS Super commented,

I am very happy with the result and have had positive feedback from staff and Directors. The website now has a freshness about it and it is easy to find things. I can definitely see the positive impact of the time taken in the discovery stage, responding to member and employer feedback and the staff feedback from each sprint.

The result

The new site has a completely revised structure with a cleaner, less cluttered design, more emphasis on imagery and more calls to action. The Agile project methodology has become integral to NGS Super’s processes, with Senior Digital Operations Manager Anthony Mair commenting that,

Our team has adopted new Agile ways of working thanks to the assistance of Luminary, with continual delivery becoming part of the culture at NGS Super.

Most importantly, NGS staff are now far more able to make changes quickly and without relying on developers.

Overall, the site has provided NGS with a secure, flexible platform that’s geared for growth, allowing the super fund to achieve its digital initiatives now and into the future.

Holding Redlich co-operated with Luminary who enhanced their website. Holding Redlich had a significant amount of valuable content on its website, but poor site architecture made it very difficult for users to find. The site design, which was five years old, also needed to be overhauled so that it would better reflect the culture and professionalism of the firm.

Holding Redlich is a major Australian law firm which had a website that was due for a refresh. It no longer represented how the firm’s clients saw it, or how internal stakeholders saw it. It needed a design that would make people feel like they were in the right place – something that would attract the right clients and the right staff.

The firm needed a new site that would:

• Allow users to easily navigate and access the vast amounts of content the firm publishes
• Offer seamless access to content across different devices
• Enable content to be published across different mediums
• Provide access to secure content for some users
• Promote the firm as a great place to work and attract an influx of talented people
• Have a major focus on practice areas that would inform users of the firm’s expertise and attract the right type of work.

What Luminary did

Holding Redlich is invested in the success of its clients through providing legal and business solutions. The site now features a greater emphasis on directing users towards other related content, which means users now have the ability to easily explore a topic in more detail.

Further, the new search feature provides an effective way to deal with a wide range of legal topics that a user may be interested in. The information architecture has been redeveloped with the intention of providing an enhanced user experience. The site’s content now takes the user on a complete journey, right through to making contact with the relevant lawyer.

The user experience has also been vastly improved for Holding Redlich’s content administrators, through the use of a Headless CMS – Kentico Cloud. This enables content creators to re-purpose content elements from the website for distribution to other mediums, such as in a response to a request for tender. One piece of content can simply be reused for multiple purposes without any duplication of effort, resulting in a significant time saving for content administrators.

Joel Lentin, Head of Marketing at Holding Redlich, stated:

Developing and building a new website can be the marketing equivalent of root canal treatment – painful, drawn out and expensive. The team at Luminary, however, not only delivered an award-winning site that hit all the right notes – they did it on time, on budget, with no fuss and a great sense of camaraderie around the project. I’ve developed many websites over the years. This version of the Holding Redlich site is the largest and most complex and Luminary made it the easiest – by a significant margin.

The result

The Holding Redlich site has gone from being cluttered and difficult to navigate, to having a clean and modern design that is far more aligned with Holding Redlich’s culture and market positioning. Since launch, the firm has seen notable increases in online traffic, time spent on the site and job applications received. Feedback also suggests that existing and prospective clients are finding it much easier to find the information they need.

PGH Bricks & Pavers™, a leading Australian brick manufacturer, needed a convenient way to help new home builders select bricks. So, Luminary created a realistic and useful Visualiser that gives the opportunity to select a product without physically seeing it on a house.

PGH Bricks is one of Australia’s largest clay brick manufacturers. PGH wanted from Luminary to provide new home builders with an industry-leading tool to help them visualise and customise the bricks for their home. The result was a web-based app built on cutting edge 3D rendering technology, with additional virtual reality capability.

The challenge

The company had an online brick Visualiser tool. However, it was clunky to use, and its imagery was not very realistic. Home designs were low-res and flat, and could not be customised or viewed from different angles. The old Visualiser also required the assistance of a developer to upload content so it was difficult to maintain. As a result, it was out of date and not reflective of the full range of products on offer.

This led to a situation where customers would have to go out with a map and drive around to view projects that had been built with their chosen bricks to see what they would actually look like on a house. This created a disconnect in the customer journey, which increased the likelihood that they would go elsewhere to purchase their bricks.

PGH needed a way to provide home builders with a Visualiser tool that would be realistic enough to give them the confidence to select a product without physically seeing it on a house.

What Luminary did

The Melbourne-headquartered agency’s starting point was to examine the state of play in the field of online customisation. While there were a number of tools on the market, they all had interfaces that were clunky and complex. Also, none of them worked particularly smoothly across different devices.

The new PGH Brick Visualiser is a responsive, content-managed app, featuring realistic real-time 3D rendering, with virtual reality capability.

The quality of the imagery – based on WebGL technology – is now extremely realistic. This gives users far greater confidence in making their selection. And for those who want to have an even more immersive experience, WebVR supports the Visualiser tool, which makes it possible to experience virtual reality from within a browser. In VR mode, the user can view the house from all different angles simply by moving their head around.

A realistic experience

Within the Visualiser, users can customise bricks – including the style of brick, bond pattern and mortar colour – as well as other features such as roofs, guttering fascias, garage doors, pavers and feature walls. They can also generate a PDF containing product information, product availability, details of their local Selection Centre, and a custom moodboard.

The Visualiser is also integrated with Pinterest and Instagram. So, users can share their custom design with others who they may want to collaborate with on the project. Also, they can simply show it off to friends! A unique code and URL are generated for each design, which not only makes social sharing a breeze, but also allows the user to share their design easily across different devices.

The result

The new Visualiser has provided PGH with an easy-to-update tool that streamlines the brick selection process, provides a better connection between the online and offline experience, and maximises the opportunity to keep customers within the PGH environment. Calls to action – such as ‘Visit a Selection Centre’ or ‘Request a Callback’ also help to keep the customer within the PGH sales funnel, thereby maximising conversions.

Unlike most of the existing customisation tools, the Visualiser exists within PGH’s Sitecore website. So, there is no visual or functional disconnect with the ‘main’ site. It is also completely content-managed. So, PGH no longer has to rely on developers to make updates. This has given the Visualiser the flexibility to continue to be a critical sales tool as the brand’s product range changes and expands.

Loren Consiglio, the Digital Marketing Manager at PGH Bricks & Pavers™ said,

We came to Luminary with a challenge to not only build an incredible tool but something that can be easily maintained and developed for our ever-changing future needs. In an industry where our competitors are all doing a similar job, Luminary has built something that really does make us stand out from the pack. Incorporating functionality, usability, cutting edge technology and that ‘WOW’ factor. Working with the team at Luminary across the whole process has been a fantastic experience.