Port of Antwerp-Bruges underscores merger with a new website

From companies and investors around the world to employees within the port area and local residents. The port provides a wealth of information for a variety of stakeholders. Putting all that information together in one place can quickly overwhelm visitors, which makes building a website for the port quite a challenge.

Next to this, the merger into Port of Antwerp-Bruges also has digital repercussions, especially in terms of bringing together content and technologies. Therefore, Port of Antwerp-Bruges was not only looking for a digital partner who could build a clear and accessible website, but also develop a future-oriented technology architecture.

To help visitors find relevant information quickly, The Reference came up with a UX concept that is driven by a strong search function. This way they avoid visitors having to click endlessly through menus and web pages before they finally reach content that is relevant to them. To make this idea work, The Reference also created an innovative design that supports the well thought out information architecture in addition to an accessible user experience.

In this project, headless Drupal takes a central role as the content management system. On the front-end side we opted for Next.js. All digital assets, such as videos and images, are loaded in via Bynder (a digital asset management platform). The search tool Algolia is a crucial element in this architecture because of its extremely powerful search functionalities.

"We are proud and happy with the beautiful website that we developed together with The Reference," says Nathalie Van Impe, Chief Communication & Marketing Officer at Port of Antwerp-Bruges. "The Reference’s team was able to understand very well the needs of our organization that communicates with a wide range of stakeholders. In addition, they challenged and advised us on our future-oriented technology architecture in a very pleasant way. This architecture is agile and allows us to quickly respond to changes in the market and demands from our customers and partners."