GS1 Australia

The challenge

GS1 Australia is part of a worldwide network of organisations in over 100 countries. GS1 introduced barcoding to Australia in 1979. Today GS1 enables more than 19,000 member companies to optimise their efficiency by implementing the GS1 system. 

GS1 Australia engaged Luminary to move its web presence from an end-of-life platform (Ektron). It wanted to find a cost-effective CMS which would also offer greater flexibility to its content editors, a broad feature set, reduced reliance on external developers, and greater control over site environments. Kentico was chosen as the platform that would best meet these needs. Another key requirement of the new site is that it needed to be responsive, as the old site was not. 

What we did

GS1 Australia’s new website offers a vastly improved user experience for both visitors and content administrators alike. Most significantly, the site is now responsive, which has been reflected in a significant uplift in the use of the site on mobile devices.

Kentico’s predictive search and filtering functionalities have meant that visitors are now far more able to find what they’re looking for on the site, which has resulted in a notable diversion of enquiries away from call operators.

The site’s structure has also been overhauled, which has boosted the efficiency of the content admin team. In the old CMS, pages and forms had been set up in a very convoluted way, which made them hard to change. Managing pages via the Kentico Content Tree and forms via the Kentico Forms Builder has greatly simplified the content editing process, allowing GS1’s content editors to directly involve marketing executives in content entry. Content editors are also now able to manage documents (such as PDF data-sheets) from their original source of SharePoint, which has greatly simplified the site structure and reduced content duplication.

To help GS1’s marketing team to get the most out of their new platform, Luminary also trained them in Kentico best practices. 

The result

Within the first three months of the launch of GS1’s new responsive website, traffic via mobile increased from 10 to 30 percent. Compared with the previous CMS, GS1’s content editors have far better access and rights to edit and manage the website. In the client’s words, Kentico’s predictive search is “leaps and bounds” better than the search functionality in the previous CMS. This enhanced search capability means that the website has become a centralised point of call for members, diverting calls away from the Customer Relations team.

Kentico has enabled GS1 to customise content in line with the emerging needs of the business, including better visuals for its photography service, and a better workflow process (with analytics) to support the sales lead process for its partner directory.

The project has created the opportunity for a dedicated CMS team at GS1, recognising that the corporate website is one of the most strategic systems in the organisation.