Ektron Case Study: A Major Professional Public Health Society

Business Profile
This major professional society is dedicated to improving public health and the professional development of its membership. As its premier educational initiative, this society produces an annual conference and exposition in Boston that draws attendees from all over New England, the Northeast, the United States, and abroad. The conference features speakers who are leading professionals in their field and cutting-edge product demonstrations, as well as the chance to network and earn continuing education credits.

Challenge
The organization wanted to increase registrations for its annual conference from nearly 25,000 in 2007 to 30,000 in 2008. The current conference Website was inadequate to handle such a surge in registrations. The goal was to update and relaunch the Website using in-house technical resources and the content management system Ektron CMS400.net. However, due to the project complexity and urgent time line, hiring an outside Web development agency became necessary. After an extensive search process, including review of numerous proposals and on-site presentations, the professional society awarded the project to Wakefly.

Solution
Wakefly designed a time line that would launch the new Website in just 8 weeks, compared to a normal turnaround time of 12 weeks for this type of project. Wakefly completed the design and development of all pages, including programming registration forms to interface with the main database and an email workflow to streamline customer inquiries. Wakefly used the Ektron CMS400.Net content management system to build a site architecture that would continuously update content as new speakers were added to the conference. Wakefly also designed a custom function to automatically mark courses as sold out as soon as the registration capacity was reached. Due to the high level of security, reliability, and processing power needed to accommodate 29,000 registrations, Wakefly partnered with the hosting vendor Rackspace to roll out the site live. At every stage, Wakefly applied rigorous design and testing standards to meet every project milestone on schedule.

Results
The new Website resulted in a big increase in publicity for the conference, with registrations rising from 25,000 in 2007 to 29,000 in 2008. The registration process went smoothly for all involved. The attendees were able to know instantly if a particular event was available, and the professional society had access to up-to-the-minute registration numbers at all times.

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