The Army’s new website hits the mark

The Australian Army have launched their new look website, Army.gov.au.

Website Manager Adam from the Australian Department of Defence worked with the GovCMS team to engage a supplier from the Drupal Services Panel.

‘The GovCMS team helped me through the RFQ process to find a suitable provider. We were really happy with who we chose. They went above and beyond and we’re pleased with the results’ said Adam.

Landing on the homepage it’s hard not to be captivated by the feature video carousel. Inspirational footage depicting Army life draws in viewers.

‘We built the previous Army website in 2012. We’ve seen a huge shift in technology trends since then. We know people are more likely to engage with video and images than heavy pieces of text. This is why the carousel is a great feature of the website. It can play videos or a photo slideshow. Content can be changed easily. This ensures the visual elements of the website are topical.’

‘People’s browsing habits have also changed. They are just as likely to view our website on their mobile phone or a tablet as they are to use a computer. Our new website can be viewed on any device. The transition between devices is seamless.’ said Adam.

‘People tend to skim content to find information. We’ve taken this into account. We used Google analytics to prioritise content in different geographic locations. We made it easy to navigate to priority content from eye catching tiles on the home page which support the Chief of Army’s primary focus. We simplified and flattened the information architecture. In the process, we were able to reduce pages from more than 1700 to 550.

Adam joined the Australian Department of Defence eighteen months ago. This was the first time he had worked on a GovCMS website.

‘Using GovCMS has been a great experience. The administration dashboard is intuitive and easy to use. I’ve also been impressed by the stability of the platform.’

Having a SaaS website has allowed Adam to focus on content development, leaving the rest to GovCMS.

‘Knowing that GovCMS looks after security patching, gives me peace of mind. I am registered with status.govcms.support to keep up-to-date with changes to the GovCMS distribution.

Adam is planning for the upgrade to Drupal 9 GovCMS distribution when it is released.