For the Swiss Hiking Trail Federation, the umbrella organisation, we rebuilt the website, CMS and user account: a trilingual platform that brings together hiking suggestions, swisstopo maps, an eShop and 26 cantonal organisations.
The Swiss Hiking Trail Federation is committed to a freely accessible hiking network that is unique in the world. Its digital offering needed to live up to that standard again.
Website, CMS and user account had aged, and the expectations of the hiking public had grown.
Instead of renewing the website in isolation, we built a platform together with the umbrella organisation: content, hiking suggestions, maps, shop and user accounts run on one foundation, in three languages: German, French and Italian.
Because no standard CMS covered the requirements, the CMS functions are integrated directly into the platform: content blocks that can be moved around flexibly, and content that is filled dynamically with hiking suggestions and guided hikes.
Hiking suggestions, guided hikes, fire pits, hikers’ inns and hiking hotels: all on swisstopo maps, with extensive filters.
CMS, website, user account and shop are not connected individual systems but parts of the same platform. That keeps maintenance lean and the options open.
Content blocks instead of rigid templates: content can be arranged freely and maintained in three languages, with an overview of which language is still missing.
Because the CMS is part of the platform, editorial content sits right next to interactive elements: hiking suggestions, guided hikes and advertising spaces appear dynamically on the website. The blog and product data were also migrated from the legacy systems.
Draw your own routes, save favourites and searches, store interests: the user account turns visitors into a community of hikers.
New accounts get 30 days of free access to all hiking suggestions. Logged in via the membership management’s OpenID solution, hikers see their personal dashboard, their orders and their discount codes.
The eShop handles orders, patron memberships and donations via PostFinance, directly on the platform.
Around it, the platform connects the existing system landscape: an interface to the CRM for donation management and user roles, XCampaign for newsletters, Flockler for social feeds and swisstopo for the map data.
Requirements change along the way, and the approach has to be able to cope with that. This project is a good example of exactly that.
Workshops with the umbrella organisation, analysis of the existing systems, a jointly defined scope of functions before the first line of code was written.
Requirements were continuously questioned, reprioritised or dropped. As a result, the platform that went live in the end meets current needs, not those from the start of the project.
Concept, design, development, migration and operations with one partner. The platform runs on the cloudtec Stack and has been continuously developed ever since.
‘cloudtec proved to be the right choice. Competent, efficient — and working with the team was pleasant and entertaining, which makes a considerable difference in a demanding project environment.’
Vera In-Albon
Project lead, website relaunch
‘Professionalism, clear lines of communication and a deep understanding of our goals. I can recommend cloudtec without reservation when it comes to achieving digitalisation goals with a reliable partner.’
Michael Roschi
Management, Swiss Hiking Trail Federation
Whether relaunch or new build: we’re happy to use this project to show you exactly how we work.
