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Following a 14 month project, Oxfordshire web agency Ridgeway Studios has today launched three brand new web sites for Europe’s largest provider of products and community services to expectant and new mothers - Family Service.  The content of each web site is maintained through Kentico’s versatile content management system.

The Austrian (www.familyservice.at), Polish (www.familyservice.pl) and Czech (www.familyservice.cz) web sites are a major advancement for the organisation as they begin to build online market share to match that which they enjoy offline.  Ridgeway Studios has been working with Family Service for over a year to design and develop a strategy and solution which will support their long-term business goals and yet allow autonomy and control at a localised level within the organisation.

The solution is based on a customised-version of Kentico’s popular content management system.  Ridgeway Studios recommended Kentico to Family Service because the solution provided the best match for their requirements and was easily customised to their specific needs.  The web sites not only feature a number of components which Kentico includes as standard, such as an easy-to-use content editing interface, multi-lingual support, social networking capabilities and powerful search functionality; but also contain extensive customisations to deliver requirements which are unique to Family Service.  The year-long project programme has delivered a solution which meets Family Service’s objective of providing mothers across Europe with a single online destination for reliable information about pregnancy, babies and health matters and access to a thriving online community of mothers and fathers in their local area.

Simon Lassam, Managing Director at Ridgeway Studios said: “The launch of these three Family Service web sites marks a key milestone in the project and for the first time, Family Service’s community members are able to explore and use the new features and enhancements to the site. Whilst Family Service has offered a number of web solutions to their members on an individual country-by-country basis in the past, this is the first time they have operated these web sites through a single, easily-supported solution with consistent functionality and content available in all countries. By using Kentico CMS, we’ve been able to allow the countries to retain control of the content and how they communicate with their local members, but within a centralised framework which makes the ongoing maintenance and development of the web sites cost-effective for Family Service as a whole.”

Alain Germillon, CEO at Family Service said: “It was important to us that we created a family of web sites which could be maintained by each of the local organisations within our business through easily understood administration tools.  It was equally important that the web sites support and enhance our other marketing channels and provide a platform for growth of our online offering.”

Download press release (PDF)