53% Forest Preserve District of Will County. Users increased by. By Americaneagle.com, USA. TOURISM NATURE PRESERVATION

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1 Forest Preserve District of Will County By Americaneagle.com, USA TOURISM NATURE PRESERVATION The new Forest Preserve District of Will County website was designed to reflect the beauty of the park, land, and other grounds the team takes care of with captivating video on the homepage and stunning imagery throughout the entire site. The new website is easy to use, engaging and cutting edge, and designed and developed to make the most of the Kentico platform. Users increased by 53%

2 Background Officially established in 1927, many of the locations within the Forest Preserve District of Will County were touched by history that predates the official establishment. The Forest Preserve contains a diverse range of different locations, ranging from 19 th -century cemeteries untouched by agricultural cultivation to World War II prisoner of war camps. The Forest Preserve website represents many different eras of Will County s history. The Forest Preserve District of Will County team also looks after and cares for some of the most beautiful natural lands in all of Illinois. Goals make the site responsive make it easy for internal staff to update and manage make the site an engaging web presence of its own previously it was simply a landing page for social media links make the most of the Forest Preserve s exceptional photography to create a visually stunning site create a site that s easy to navigate and user-friendly Challenges The old site was not responsive and it was extremely labor intensive, with a third party needed to make relatively simple and easy updates to the site. The old site had no workflow and was nothing more than a landing page. Solution The developers at Americaneagle.com worked with the Forest Preserve District of Will County to design and develop a new site and integrate it with Hawk Search, Instagram, YouTube, and the Forest Preserve s existing service. The new site is built on the easy-to-manage Kentico platform, so the Forest Preserve team can easily and quickly update and manage the site independently. Our goal when we set out to redo our site, which was originally launched in 2009, was to make the new site look completely different than a typical government website and to be as user-friendly as possible. By working with Americaneagle.com, we were able to come up with an end product that allows us to showcase all of our great content, from videos to photos to events, and easily change it out as needed, while making it convenient for people to navigate through the site. To say the new ReconnectWithNature.org is a major upgrade is an understatement. We d definitely recommend Americaneagle.com if you re looking to create a visually stunning website. Chad Merda Communications and Creative Services Manager Forest Preserve District of Will County The new site is visually stunning, with video dominating the home page. It also showcases the beautiful photography of the Forest Preserve. The Big Picture section of the website uses functionality usually reserved for Adobe to display dynamic images with text feeding in and out. Kentico s Custom Page Types allow flexible content and provide the client with an easy way to update their site. The vast number of settings in Kentico allowed Americaneagle.com to fine tune both the SEO and speed aspects of the site. This also led to high rankings across a number of testers, such as Nibbler and webpagetest.org. The Events page allows users to filter by activity type and more.

3 Americaneagle.com used Kentico Cloud for content audit and migration purposes. The Kentico Cloud made things easy right from the start. Americaneagle.com was able to structure data prior to development, and once development started, a full website ensued relatively quickly. Form customizing was an easy task with built-in conditionals. Custom Page Types allowed for flexibility with content and provided Forest Preserve with an easy way to update their site. One of the major factors and advantages in using Kentico was the use of bi-relational related data. Using this feature, Forest Preserve can link news to other content types throughout the site. Once this happens, the new content is displayed on these content types automatically, without any additional work. This feature makes content management a much easier process for Forest Preserve. Americaneagle.com continues to host the site. The Forest Preserve has witnessed some great statistical increases in users and views since launch, including a huge increase in traffic at night and the site is now responsive. The navigation of the new site is also greatly improved. Numerous Kentico solutions and features were used for this project: Kentico Draft Import/Kentico Cloud used for content audit and migration (this was crucial for the project!) Custom Page Types to drive most content various built-in Widgets, such as "Head HTML Code" for SEO techniques.

4 the Events page also features a tool that allows users to filter by activity type and more. Forms that display certain fields based on previous selections. Results The new site was launched in May A comparison between May 2017 to December 20, 2017, and May 2016 to December 20, 2016, provided the following statistics: 37.3% increase in users 36.8% increase in page views for that period in 2016, 36.1% of traffic was from returning visitors and in that time period in 2017, it s 40.9% 128% increase in interactive map users 146% increase in interactive map page views "Big Picture" Section allowing for parallax type stories accessibility the site passes many strict standards of accessibility and checkers such as Wave The site scores high rankings across a number of testers, such as nibbler, webpagetest.org, and more Key Criteria for Choosing Kentico Americaneagle.com chooses to work with Kentico because of its flexibility and out-of-the-box feature set. Clients are provided with sites that are built on a platform that s engineered for their success. The Kentico platform has the ability to act as an all-in-one solution for clients that are in need of E- commerce, CMS, and Online Marketing in one, easy-to-use and manageable platform.

5 Americaneagle.com Americaneagle.com, a Kentico Gold Solutions and Hosting Partner founded in 1978, is a leading Web design, development, hosting, and marketing agency based in Des Plaines, Illinois. Currently, Americaneagle.com employs approximately 400+ professionals in offices throughout the country including Chicago, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington D.C. Some of their 7,000+ clients include Komatsu USA, FASTSIGNS, Stuart Weitzman, WeatherTech.com, Chicago Bears, and the American Dental Association. For additional information about Americaneagle.com, visit Americaneagle.com 2600 S. River Road Des Plaines, IL info@americaneagle.com