Association of Zoos & Aquariums

Website Redesign & CMS Implementation

TBG & AZA

Have you been responsible for the mating of elephants recently? Have you been bitten by a snake in the course of your workday at the zoo, and then rushed to the Web to find the appropriate antidote? Are you looking for a career in animal conservation at an accredited zoo or aquarium? Or are you just concerned about the humane treatment of animals in zoos?

In any of these cases, you may have recently used www.aza.org, an award-winning website developed by TBG (The Berndt Group), for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). Constructed using the Ektron CMS and taking advantage of the full feature set of that CMS, the site features beautiful design, great usability, and a ton of interactive features that go beyond the public website via Intranet and Extranet capabilities.

AZA

Live Site

What We Did

Technology Partners

Awards

Close Collaboration
Tailoring the Solution to the Requirements

Close Collaboration

TBG developed the project in close collaboration with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The project involved a careful audit of AZA's existing desktop database systems.

Then, in combination with the full site design, TBG developed a conceptual model for providing these database services (such as tracking the population and pedigree of individual animals, and researching animal conservation programs around the world) into Ektron's CMS framework, focusing on how to obtain the most value from the existing data in the context of a full-featured CMS/portal.

The results, which have had extremely high uptake, have been gratifying all around, as the data is now thoroughly incorporated into a highly functional set of applications, content, personalization, and collaborative work area features.

Tailoring the Solution to the Requirements

The development of the AZA website benefited from a number of careful considerations:

Careful planning around both public users needs and the needs of various internal audiences (zoo workers, managers of themed discussion groups, and the like) allowed the design of the site to bring a great deal of value to these groups.

Our choice of the Ektron CMS was tailored to the requirements of the project, that included a substantial amount of password-protected and personalized content, both of which Ektron does well.

Our highly lucid structured design process and expert project management practices held together all the details of this sprawling process, and gave our client a framework to explore their ideas in detail.

The site won an Ektron All Star Award for "Best Association Site," and has gotten consistently rave reviews.

BMA Website Redesign