With 20 000 visitors every day, it's important to keep track of the users' needs

The Norwegian Mapping Authority, the equivalent of the Swedish Land Survey, collects and structures data from sea, land and space. In other words, there is a lot of content that needs to be presented in a clear way, which is not an easy task. The old website was almost 10 years old and the cumbersome technology heritage brought with it limitations and compromises, but with Epinova's help, the agency took a new approach to its digital presence.

The best-before date had been reached

The Mapping Authority has a broad and varied group of users. The agency offers everything from hiking maps and outdoor maps to property registration and information on sea levels.

With over 20,000 visitors to kartverket.no every day, the website is aimed at both companies and individuals. Together with Epinova, the agency has taken the step into a modern solution based on Optimizely (formerly Episerver), and an updated and more service-based look that makes it much easier and faster to find the information you are looking for.

The best-before date was not only reached for the technology. Parts of the content had been sorted and structured according to internal subject areas, and the technical limitations made it difficult to present the content in a clear and useful way.

The National Mapping Authority wanted the new website to be the most important entry point for the various services it offers. As technology advances, so have visitors' expectations of the Swedish Mapping Authority's website. To ensure that both Kartverket's vision and the users' needs were met, we started from scratch. What do users really need? And what do they expect to be able to find and do on the web?

The road to a new website

Epinova was responsible for the technical development and our Norwegian sister company Northern Beat was responsible for concept development, UX and design. We have worked as a cross-functional team in close collaboration with the Mapping Authority's product owners and with the support of the Mapping Authority's customer service and other departments within the authority.

An important starting point was the review of website statistics and analysis data from several years ago. It was worth its weight in gold and got us up and running quickly with user testing. Since the target group is so broad with both companies and individuals, we needed to take into account many types of stakeholders. It was also important for us to ensure the editors' perspective. A flexible and usable editor interface was essential for a successful and sustainable solution.

The new website is based on Epinova's framework

The new website is based on Optimizely (formerly Episerver) and Epinova's framework, which we use to deliver high-quality solutions faster. It also contains several of Epinova's ready-to-use modules such as Epinova Responsive Images for modern responsive image management, which ensures good performance and helps editors with image management. The solution also uses Search and Navigation (formerly Episerver Find) both for free text search and to be able to present content based on taxonomy.

With integrated applications, complex information is presented visually well to visitors, such as:

• The ability to see how possible future changes in sea level affect buildings near the sea.
• View information about municipal mergers that have taken place in Norway in recent years.
• To present corrections to nautical charts in a structured way.
• Download solution for 16,000 historical maps that can be downloaded for free.