Dear colleagues,
Dear visitors of the WONCA Europe website,
On behalf of the WONCA Europe communications team, we are excited to announce and welcome you to our new website!
The development of the new website represents the culmination of our three-year communication strategy, which started with the analysis of our organisational needs. We held a series of discussions with key stakeholders and colleagues to better understand what was expected from our online presence. We heard from many of you that our activities and scientific work needed more visibility, and that more content creation and curation were desired to make our efforts reach all concerned parties and partners.
So, we started from scratch and set off to develop the new website with the objective to:
- increase visibility of the activities of WONCA Europe, its networks and special interest groups;
- facilitate sharing of the content and engagement in conversations;
- provide a simple and modern user interface, accessible on mobile devices.
Enter the new website!
To respond to these objectives, we have developed a new expandable platform, reorganised our content, and introduced a new, clean and consistent site-wide layout. Here’s what is new:
- A redesigned news section: you will see more content, a clearer layout, improved photo quality and embedded videos from the web (and our YouTube channel). You will also see tweets integrated into our news articles: we believe this is a great way to convey opinions from key influencers of our discipline, and encourage you to engage in the conversation. In the meantime, we have streamlined our procedures under the hood to facilitate news sharing easier on social media.
- A new events section featuring our upcoming events, and from our networks and partners.
- An increased focus on our activities, including position papers and statements, and WONCA scholarship and award programmes.
- New pages on our networks and special interest groups, which will soon include more information on their work and related content.
- An enriched integration of two journals: the European Journal of General Practice and Education for Primary Care. We’ve included a list of the latest published articles showcasing more of our scientific content.
What’s next: we are developing a platform, not a single website
Of course, this is only a list of the “must-have” features which have been prioritised for the launch of the new website. Over the next months, we will continue to work on its enhancement, with features like immediate news sharing among our networks. More content, such as conference abstracts, will be reworked and included in the near future.
Furthermore, as five of our networks are hosted on our server, it has been our aim since the beginning to build a platform – not a simple website – and facilitate the development and sharing of new features. Imagine the potential: introducing a new functionality for EURACT’s or the Vasco da Gama Movement’s websites, enabling all of our networks to easily customise and use it on their own websites, and adapt it to their needs. Accordingly, you can expect the websites of our networks to start rolling out new redesigned pages in the near future.
Acknowledgements
Throughout this journey, we have worked with an amazing team of people, to whom we would like to extend our gratitude: Tim Camps, our Web Developer, and Alice Beste, our Communications Facilitator, have put an incredible amount of effort in developing the platform and redesigning the features and content; the members of the Communications Advisory Board, Esra Saatci, Raquel Gómez Bravo, Ana Luísa Neves and Ferdinando Petrazzuoli, have provided valuable feedback and contributred to shaping the website, and; the Chairs of the Networks and the WONCA Europe Executive Board have helped us understand the needs and define the priorities. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the work of Carl Steylearts, the former Honorary Treasurer and Webmaster, who, in a forward-looking manner, encouraged the integration of the networks under one platform as a way to take advantage of our synergies.
Feedback? Yes, please!
Your feedback will help us make improvements, and shape the future of our website. Drop us a line at: communications@woncaeurope.org