New ZEW Homepage Successfully Relaunched

The new homepage of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) was launched at www.zew.eu on January 25, 2016. After several months of construction, the relaunch of the institute's website has been successfully completed. A special focus was set on a clear presentation of the extensive, international activities of the economic research institute, which include research and economic policy advice as well as knowledge transfer, events, and qualification programmes. Against the backdrop of an increasingly professional science communication, the new homepage constitutes a key component in ZEW's communication strategy.

"Our new homepage, will be an extremely helpful tool to communicate our excellent scientific work to the public. The new website presents the institute's work in a modern and user-friendly way," explains Thomas Kohl, Director of Business and Administration at ZEW.

The relaunch of the website is the result of an intensive, nine-month collaboration between ZEW’s Online Communications team and the contracted agency CPS-IT. Sascha Böttcher, Chief Executive Officer at CPS-IT, comments on the joint effort: "From the technical design stage of the website to its implementation, collaboration with the ZEW team has been target-oriented and professional from the very beginning, allowing for all project phases to be completed within schedule and financial planning. As you can tell by the result of this cooperation, the core teams on both sides were highly motivated and enjoyed working on the project."

In technical terms, the agile driven project is based on the latest version of the TYPO3 content management system (version 7.6 LTS). The new website uses responsive web design, i.e., it automatically adjusts to fit display sizes and mobile devices. The colour coding and the typeface, which were selected in accordance with ZEW’s corporate identity, as well as large images ensure clarity for all users. A high-performance content management system now enables pool contents, such as event announcements or news, to be dynamically displayed in different parts of the website. A special challenge was the integration of the extensive existing databases during operation.

The relaunch was a crucial step towards establishing cross media publishing and a current research information system at ZEW. Yvonne Bräutigam, ZEW’s head of Online Communications: "CPS-IT has been an extremely reliable partner with great quality standards working with us on this large project."

For further information please contact

Yvonne Bräutigam (ZEW), Phone +49(0)621/1235-322, E-mail yvonne.braeutigam@zew.de

Sascha Böttcher (CPS-IT), Phone+49(0)30/2009549-0, E-mail boettcher@cps-it.de