The Australian Air Force Cadets required a new design, information architecture and website to be developed on GovCMS. The aim of the new website was to assist the AAFC with its future marketing efforts, in particular with the recruitment drive that runs from October to March each year.
The AAFC required assistance to investigate the key user personas and journeys, and resolve complex content challenges. The new site had to appeal to a young person exploring the opportunity of joining the cadets, a parent looking for information for their child, a volunteer wanting to contribute their knowledge & time as well as other stakeholders within the Department of Defence and Corporate partners.
About the project
Morpht ran a series of workshops with key AAFC staff. In these workshops we covered key issues and requirements that were documented to articulate a clear understanding of what we needed to deliver, and provided clear guidelines for our development team to aid them through the build process.
The website had to be engaging; it had to appeal to a younger ‘TikTok’ / Instagram focused cohort as well as provide important information for parents and volunteers.
Working with our designer, the AAFC and Morpht developed a website that utilises video, parallax imagery, icons and click-through-actions (CTA’s) to guide a site visitor through the core narrative of who, why and how.
The completed website is hosted on GovCMS SaaS and includes a REACT App that delivers the ‘Find your nearest squadron’ feature.
User journeys
One of the key processes we worked on with the AAFC was the identification of the key audience and their personas. For this website we identified 3 core audience members - a prospective cadet, their parents, and a volunteer.
We then developed a journey map for each of these groups:
The Journey map helped the AAFC to understand the motivation behind each audience member, and provided a guide on what visual assets we would need to engage, and how to structure the content on each page to ensure that the communication was targeted and on message.
Squadron finder
One of the biggest challenges for this website was the navigation for the site visitor to find their nearest squadron and register their interest to join. There were several scenarios that needed to be considered.
- Registration only occurs from October to March each year, outside of these times the registration form is closed.
Morpht’s solution for this was to provide the power for the AAFC to switch off the ‘enrol now’ button and replace it with a downloadable calendar notification, so that interested site visitors could easily set a reminder for themselves to return and register when applications re-open. - There were 3 sign-up journeys required for different audience members.
- Cadets needed to find a local squadron and register their interest.
- Volunteers needed to fill in an online form.
- Pilots who wanted to offer their services as Instructors needed to follow a different process and sign up to a squadron that has a focus on Flight operations.
Morpht resolved this complexity by using Accordions to separate the different user journeys, deliver the important eligibility requirements for each group and guide them through to the appropriate sign-up location.
The squadron finder combines the power of Google Map API and REACT to deliver a fast loading location guide. By typing in your suburb, the APP quickly delivers the squadrons nearest to your location. By selecting your preferred location you can find out the information on that squadron and click the ‘Join Squadron’ button to sign up. The sign-up are occurs on another platform, but the APP we developed is smart enough to pass on the squadron you are interested in - making it a seamless sign up process for the prospective new cadet.
Why Drupal was chosen
The Australian Air Force Cadets required a new website to be built on the GovCMS platform, which utilised Drupal as its CMS of choice.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
