ICPDR.org: Website Relaunch for Danube Day
Danube Basin, 29 July 2012. The official website of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, www.icpdr.org, was re-launched just in time for the annual celebration of Danube Day on 29 June 2012. Over years, the old website had grown in content and became increasingly difficult to browse. The new design should not only allow the contents to become more accessible through an intuitive navigation, it also complies with state-of-the-art usability rules.
The re-launch of icpdr.org makes brings the website design into line with the ICPDR’s “corporate identity”, the handwriting and style of other key-publications. It was prepared for almost a year with the involvement of the ICPDR’s expert groups for Public Participation as well as IT from within the ICPDR Secretariat. The responsible agency, selected through a tender among eight agencies from four countries, is the Vienna-based Echonet Communication G.m.b.H.
Echonet has ample experience with public-sector websites and a strong record for high usability sites – the development for websites that are suitable for visually impaired and otherwise handicapped people. A particular challenge for the design team was the conflict between the two main target groups: specialists looking for in-depth, technical information on one hand and the general public looking for information on Danube Day or other out-reach activities on the other. The dilemma was solved by a drop-down menu which allows for a much more intuitive navigation.
For users with a low-bandwidth internet connection, the entire website offers a “light” version with smaller file sizes that load more quickly. The contents of the website have remained largely the same, but they will be reviewed, carefully updated and extended over the course of the coming weeks. A particularly useful feature of the new website is the possibility to create so-called “microsites” for special topics – this would allow the integration of previously separate websites for Danube Day, the Joint Danube Survey or other special areas.
