Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg: Website relaunch with CMS from e-Spirit

Optimization of user friendliness and more efficient editing processes

The Investitionsbank des Landes Brandenburg (ILB) can be reached through its new Internet site www.ilb.de with immediate effect. As the main promotional institute Investitionsbank supports the German federal state of Brandenburg and other public authorities in the performance of their tasks, having a core focus on promoting public and private investment projects in business, infrastructure and housing. The central objective of the relaunch with the FirstSpirit content management system (CMS) from e-Spirit (www.e-Spirit.com) is to optimize user friendliness and to provide easier access to relevant information. With its intuitive usability, the FirstSpirit CMS also increases the efficiency of the editing process and ensures that in future more ILB employees can be very easily involved in the creation, management and maintenance of content for the web pages. The technical implementation of the new web site was carried out by the Internet agency and e-Spirit partner kernpunkt GmbH.

Decentralized editing and new interfaces

Instead of a single central editing team, with the introduction of the FirstSpirit CMS several functional departments of the ILB are now involved in the editing process. Release workflows control the quality assurance and subsequent deployment of the content. The ILB's website has interfaces with various third-party systems, which are used to integrate external content, for example, real estate offers. In addition, content can be flexibly output with the new information architecture. For example, it is possible to send up-to-the minute news as newsletters to registered interested persons. Brief information, guidelines and leaflets on the various grants and development programs offered by the ILB are created by the editors directly in FirstSpirit and are made available in PDF format. They are then available in the document center, like all other publications, ready for downloading. The download itself works with the new Info basket. Users can collect the documents they require in it, and then download them together at the end of their visit to the site.

Accesses for new and experienced users

Customer surveys were used to take into account the users' wishes in the new design of the layout. The new design is less cluttered and clearly places the ILB brand in the foreground. With the new structure of the ILB's Internet site the focus is on the users' objective. Directly on the start page, boxes not only provide up-to-date information on the company and its development programs but also provide information about forthcoming events. The new "FörderFinder" (grants finder) also ensures easy access to the website. With the help of two drop-down lists, users can specifically define which grants they are looking for and are switched to the required information with only three clicks. Experienced users can use the menu in the header area to purposefully navigate to where they want to be. www.ilb.de also takes into account the requirements of accessible web design and is completely search engine optimized to make it easier to find on the Internet.

"With the further development of our new web site we have increased our focus on customer friendliness still further. The site is fresher and less cluttered and has numerous new service functions. Thanks to the new structure, users will be able to access our content even more easily," says Tillmann Stenger, Member of the Board Investitionsbank.