IPA to revamp online presence

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising is to overhaul its online presence and has awarded the contract to Nottingham-based Senior Internet (http://www.senior.co.uk/).

Work commenced last month on the redesign of http://ipa.co.uk/ following a three way pitch, involving Senior and two London agencies.

Senior is working on developing an innovative and flexible solution that will make the IPA website the central point of contact for the Institute’s 17,367 members as well as being a showcase for the advertising industry.

“Our current website was designed four years ago and has served us very well indeed,” says Mark Rasdall, IPA Knowledge Director. “A combination of new technologies, new design styles and the need to deliver information quicker and more easily to members and non members, has once again prompted us to take stock of the site and invite some of the internet industry’s leading agencies to talk to us. Senior grasped our objective, challenged our brief and came up with an innovative and flexible solution which will make our online presence so much more beneficial to users.”

The Senior team working on the new site is headed by Tricia Durrant. “We’re delighted to have been appointed to work on such a prestigious brief,” she comments. “It is really quite unusual for an agency outside of London to be asked to work on a project of such gravitas.

“Senior is more than just a website design company, we’re focused on developing internet solutions and this philosophy underpinned our proposals. We’re looking at making the IPA’s online presence easier to manage and working on a completely new navigation and user interface which will allow each user to personalise the way ipa.co.uk looks and delivers relevant information.”

The new ipa.co.uk will be released for user testing in June 2007 and as well as redesigning the website, Senior is also providing hosting and ongoing training for IPA website editors.