UPDATE! Last Call Media was just named a finalist in the 2016 Acquia Engage Awards for our work with Haverford College. Read more here.
On September 1, Haverford relaunched their home page with some great new features, including:
- Revised site-wide navigation
- A seriously upgraded search function
- An enhanced user menu to help users get to resources they need easily
Haverford’s in-house communications and development teams executed all of these changes. We want to send them an enthusiastic congratulations on a job well done!
Partnering with our clients
For Last Call Media, this is an enormous success story. We’re not kidding when we say that our goal is to become our client’s partner in solving their organizational needs. Whether we’re working in print or online, we know that our products are tools that must achieve a measurable goal. Our projects have to be much more than the products we create, they must be effective tools in service of a strategy. We work hard to be an extension of our partners’ internal team and to help them master the systems we build together.
Assessing the needs of the project
Way back in December of 2014 when we got the call from Haverford about redoing their site in Drupal, we thought it was going to be a redesign. After initial conversations, we agreed to do a Discovery and Strategy engagement first to determine what the true needs were and then develop a strategy for solutions. We conducted stakeholder interviews and thought it was interesting that they scheduled their communications team to be the stakeholders. It quickly emerged from these interviews that they were, in fact, the correct stakeholders on this project.
Prioritizing goals
Haverford didn’t need a redesign; their site looked great already. The biggest issue they needed to solve was not having enough time to do new feature development themselves. They were a smart and capable team and over many years had developed and maintained a large custom PHP implementation for college’s website needs. They were finding, however, that too much of their time was being spent updating pages for college members and groups. Their hope was for us to build them a site that looked and functioned like their current site but built on a modern CMS with exceptional user management and publishing workflows.
Implementing solutions
Once we had alignment on their needs and a strategy for solutions, we built out a Content Model, Product Backlog, and Information Architecture. The project was completed with Drupal, in steady collaboration with the Communications team, in 5 development Sprints and launched on the Acquia Infrastructure.
Continued relationship
Our Acquia Certified Grand Master Developer Jeff Landfried shared the details of his experience on that team here. Since then, we’ve continued to work with Haverford on an ongoing basis as part of our dedicated Continuous Delivery relationship - where our dedicated team of developers helps to keep their site secure, up-to-date, and assists as needed with anything from strategy to design to development.
The migration of Haverford to Drupal on Acquia remains one of our favorite projects to date, and it’s a great source of professional pride for all of us. We look forward to a long partnership with Haverford as we continuously evaluate how their online experience is meeting the needs of the College.
