New website launch

Client

ESPON - The European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion

About the client

ESPON is an EU-funded programme that bridges research with policies. It provides territorial analyses, data and maps to support EU development policies and help public authorities to benchmark their region or city, identify new challenges and potentials and shape successful development policies for the future.

Deliverable

Website design and development

About the deliverable

The successful completion of the ESPON website development project marks a significant milestone in enhancing the programme’s digital presence and operational efficiency. Hypertech, which undertook the project of designing and developing the website, leveraged cutting-edge technologies to ensure a scalable, intuitive, and future-proof digital presence for ESPON.

To provide a seamless, user-centric experience that empowers stakeholders and internal teams, Hypertech built the website on the Drupal platform and integrated advanced technologies like Apache Solr, ArcGIS, and a bespoke design system. The streamlined content organisation, powerful search capabilities, advanced event management, and simplified account management also contributed to making the ESPON website more accessible, dynamic, and responsive to the needs of its diverse audience.

Furthermore, the tailored tools for content submission, review, and management empower ESPON Contact Points to contribute and update information easily, ensuring the website remains a reliable and up-to-date resource. With a future-proof infrastructure, robust integration capabilities, and an intuitive user interface, the new ESPON website is well-positioned to support the programme’s mission of delivering high-quality territorial data and insights to policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders across Europe.

Strategic objectives of the website

The development of ESPON’s new website was strategically aligned with the programme’s mission to provide territorial evidence, data, and resources that support policy-making across Europe. The overarching aim was to create a modern digital platform capable of meeting the evolving needs of its diverse audience, including policymakers, researchers, and practitioners.

A key priority was to improve accessibility and usability, ensuring stakeholders could easily explore ESPON’s extensive repository of territorial evidence and data. The platform was designed to foster integration and collaboration, establishing a unified digital ecosystem that seamlessly connects the new website with the ESPON Portal, offering a streamlined experience across tools and resources.

To support ESPON’s long-term objectives, the project prioritised a future-proof infrastructure that could scale with technological advancements. This included implementing robust hosting environments with structured staging areas for testing and deploying new releases, ensuring the platform remains reliable and secure through ongoing development.

The website also aimed to empower ESPON Contact Points (ECPs) by providing tools that enable efficient content contribution. An intuitive content management interface was developed, complemented by a review and approval mechanism to maintain quality and consistency. At the same time, the platform was crafted to reflect ESPON’s brand identity, delivering a cohesive and professional user experience that fosters trust and recognition among its diverse stakeholders.

By addressing these strategic objectives, the new website has established a strong foundation for ESPON to expand its impact and further its role as a key resource in territorial development and policy innovation across Europe.

Key achievements:

• Enhanced content organisation: A cornerstone of the ESPON website redevelopment was the creation of a sophisticated system for content organisation, ensuring that users can efficiently discover and access relevant information. The platform leverages Drupal’s capabilities to implement advanced taxonomies and vocabularies, enabling precise tagging and categorisation of content. This structured approach not only simplifies content management but also enhances the user experience by providing a logical framework for navigating ESPON’s extensive resources.
  
  

  For end-users, integrating these taxonomies with filtering mechanisms has been transformative. Visitors can now easily refine their searches using predefined categories, ensuring they quickly find content that aligns with their specific needs. Whether accessing reports, policy briefs, or tools, the structured tagging system enables users to uncover insights with minimal effort.

• Unified search functionality: The new ESPON website introduces a powerful unified search system, designed to simplify the discovery of information across multiple platforms. Central to this achievement is the integration of Apache Solr, a robust and scalable search engine. Solr enables faceted search functionality, allowing users to filter results dynamically based on taxonomy terms, content types, and other metadata. This advanced filtering system ensures users can pinpoint the exact information they need, enhancing the overall search experience.
  
  

  From a technical perspective, the unified search interface was developed to fetch and display asynchronous results from two separate systems—the new ESPON website powered by Solr and the ESPON Portal built on ArcGIS. To ensure consistency and relevance, the system maps taxonomy terms from the Drupal website to ArcGIS’s tagging framework. This harmonisation of categorisation allows users to see integrated and contextually accurate search results, regardless of the originating platform.

• Advanced event management: The ESPON website features an advanced event management system designed to boost the organisation, promotion, and execution of events. This system streamlines the entire event lifecycle, offering capabilities such as automated status changes that ensure events go live or expire based on predefined schedules. These tools allow ESPON’s administrators to efficiently manage a wide range of events, from workshops to conferences, without manual intervention at every stage. A standout feature of the new system is its seamless integration with YouTube for live streaming. Events featuring live broadcasts are automatically marked with a "Live" flag, making them highly visible across the website. These live events are dynamically promoted on key pages, ensuring stakeholders can easily discover and participate in real-time activities.

• Tailored design system: The ESPON website incorporates a bespoke design system that reflects the organisation’s brand identity while ensuring consistency, usability, and scalability across devices and platforms. This design system was carefully crafted to align with ESPON’s mission and visual standards, providing a professional and cohesive look that fosters trust and engagement among its diverse audience.
  
  Built with responsiveness at its core, the design ensures functionality and aesthetics across a wide range of screen sizes, from desktops to mobile devices. Key elements, such as typography, colour schemes, and iconography, were standardised to maintain uniformity. The system’s modular approach allows ESPON to easily expand and adapt its digital presence, accommodating future growth and changes in user needs.
  
  

  Beyond aesthetics, the design system integrates accessibility best practices, ensuring compliance with web standards (WCAG 2.2) and improving usability for all stakeholders, including those with disabilities.

• Simplified account management: The ESPON website introduces a simplified yet robust account management system designed to streamline user interaction and empower key contributors, such as ESPON Contact Points (ECPs), to efficiently manage their content submissions. The platform offers a structured workflow that supports the entire lifecycle of content, from drafting through to publishing and archiving, ensuring smooth transitions between stages such as “pending review” or “requires revision.” This workflow allows ECPs to submit content for review while administrators can oversee and approve contributions with clear editing restrictions during the review phase, safeguarding content integrity.
  
  To facilitate collaboration, the system incorporates enhanced communication tools, enabling feedback exchange between ECPs and administrators within the platform. A dedicated review comments field allows both parties to discuss content directly, streamlining the review process and improving transparency.
  
  

  Additionally, transactional email notifications are integrated to inform users of updates and status changes in real time. ECPs can stay informed of each step in the process, from when their submission moves to review to when it is published or archived. A "My Contributions" view offers a centralised dashboard where ECPs can track the status of all their contributions, ensuring they have full visibility and control over their work.

• Seamless content migration: A critical component of the new ESPON website development was the migration of content from the previous platform to ensure continuity and data integrity. The migration process was meticulously planned and executed to prevent data loss, preserve structure, and maintain the quality of information throughout the transition.
  
  All content, including reports, research data, policy briefs, and multimedia assets, was carefully mapped and transferred to the new system, maintaining alignment with the updated taxonomy and content organisation structure. Special attention was given to ensuring that internal links, metadata, and other vital components were correctly retained and functional.

This process not only minimised disruption for users but also ensured that the vast array of ESPON’s resources remained accessible, up-to-date, and organised on the new platform.

Discover the new ESPON website>>> https://www.espon.eu/