The Boston

Redevelopment

Authority www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org

Industry Government Partner Boston Interactive 529 Main Street Suite 210 Charlestown, MA 02129 USA www.bostoninteractive.com Contact Chuck Murphy cmurphy@bostoninteractive.com 617-241-7977

Background The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) is the City’s urban planning and economic

development agency that works in partnership with the community to plan Boston’s

future while respecting its past. Goals The BRA partnered with Boston Interactive to revamp their entire digital strategy

through the development of a new website that would reflect their values of

accessibility and transparency. It was important that the new online presence

accurately portray the organization’s positive impact in the Boston community and

successfully showcase their commitment to residents.

Challenges A major challenge of the project was to provide BRA constituents with accurate,

relevant, and timely information. To accomplish this, the website needed to enable

numerous members of the BRA staff with the ability to edit their respective

departmental pages documents and events. Boston Interactive was tasked with

developing a dynamic workflow to support this while ultimately delivering a positive

user experience for all website visitors.

Solution The new BRA website strives to boost public involvement by providing visitors with

increased access to project and agency

information. The homepage features an

interactive map of Boston’s

neighborhoods that users can click on to

access “At a Glance” landing pages with

development news and information

specific to each area. It was important

that the new website empower users

with direct access to documents and

information that previously required a

phone call or a trip to the BRA’s offices.

With this in mind, Boston Interactive

created online Document Center and Calendar sections that maximize the

transparency of the organization through quick access to relevant content and the

ability to refine results through dynamic filtering options.

The website also includes the following features:

1. MailChimp and Kentico Integration: When users enter their email address,

they’re automatically subscribed to the mailing list that’s custom-catered for

their specific neighborhood.

2. Projects: Integration with the BRA’s database (separate to Kentico) enables

information regarding individual projects to be automatically pulled in to the

new site.

3. Blog Consolidation: Boston Interactive migrated previous news stories from a

disparate blog so all BRA news is now housed within the main site.

4. Workflow: The site now utilizes Kentico’s workflow capabilities to make for

timely, efficient updates according to the BRA’s internal resource responsibilities.

5. Document Center: This area features elaborate filtering and refining

capabilities to allow website visitors to more quickly and easily find the content

they seek.

6. Content Distribution: A dynamic tagging systems allows news items to be

related to specific neighborhoods, business initiatives, or events so that content

is shared across multiple URLs throughout the site according to topic or

relevance. For example, an event taking place in Allston is not only featured in

the Events section, but in the Allston Events section as well.

Results The new website has drastically improved the BRA’s digital presence by presenting a

more unified, transparent and accessible brand. The website has received much

positive feedback among the Boston community as a result of its dynamic database

integrations resulting in the ability to provide users with increased information and

resources that were previously only available at the BRA offices.

Four months after launch, the new Boston Redevelopment Authority website yielded

significant improvements including:

20% increase in website visits

33% increase in average visit duration

18.6% increase in mobile user growth

29% decrease in bounce rate

Statistics via Boston Redevelopment Authority.

Testimonial “The challenge of this project was to create an engaging user experience that would showcase BRA projects and build trust with each user.We are thoroughly pleased with the result and are confident that this new marketing tool successfully highlights the BRA’s positive impact on the city of Boston.”

Chuck Murphy Founder and CEO Boston Interactive

Key criteria for selecting Kentico Kentico was selected for this project based on the following features: Map Integration Document Management Event Calendar Newsletters Content Tags Standard Workflow