Proactive Partnership Bridges Digital Divide in Remote North

Evolving Web collaborated with Northwestel to enhance the client’s digital presence and streamline the delivery of affordable TV, telephone, and internet services, ensuring connectivity and service accessibility for Northern communities. Our collaboration began with a comprehensive website audit and has evolved into a long-term, strategic partnership focused on continuous improvement. Key initiatives have included migrating the Drupal website to a reliable and scalable cloud hosting environment, upgrading to the latest version of Drupal for enhanced security and performance, and redesigning the e-commerce experience to provide a streamlined and user-friendly shopping cart. Over time, we have extended website functionality, explored new digital opportunities, and aligned the platform with Northwestel’s future-focused goals. Together, we are continuously refining and enhancing the platform to meet evolving business needs and customer expectations.

Northwestel is the largest telecommunications provider in Canada’s North, serving 97 communities across the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia and Alberta. Beginning in 2020, Northwestel’s Every Community project significantly improved broadband services for northern residents, governments, and businesses using the latest fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite technologies. Now, over 95% of homes in the Yukon and NWT have access to high-speed, unlimited fibre-powered internet, either fibre to the home or fibre to the neighbourhood. 

Northwestel is proud to provide service on the traditional territories of Indigenous peoples across Canada’s North. In 2024, Sixty North Unity, a consortium of Indigenous organizations, announced its plans to purchase Northwestel and make it a wholly-owned Indigenous company, which will make it the largest Indigenous-owned telecommunications in the world. In partnership with Evolving Web, Northwestel has a small internal Digital team that is highly dedicated to ensuring that its site provides a superior and value-added user experience.
 

To better serve customers and support business objectives, Northwestel aimed to modernize their digital platform. Key priorities have included moving the Drupal website to a reliable and scalable cloud hosting environment, upgrading to the latest version of Drupal for enhanced security and performance, and designing a new shopping cart experience. Additionally, Northwestel sought to improve backend system integrations to lower the cost of ownership, provide personalization to streamline the user experience, and ensure compliance with WCAG AA standards. There was also the desire to set up a SEO strategy to support ongoing marketing and communication efforts.

Evolving Web developed and implemented a series of strategic solutions. These initiatives focused on enhancing the technical foundation, streamlining workflows, and improving user experiences. By addressing critical infrastructure challenges and aligning the digital platform with best practices, we ensured that Northwestel could deliver a superior experience to its diverse and widely dispersed Northern audience. The depth of Evolving Web’s expertise and strategic support has served as the foundation for a trusted partnership that consistently builds upon the project success. 

Here’s a summary of our engagement with Northwestel within the following categories:

• Enhancing the shopping cart experience, implementing best practices for UX, to help customers navigate among a wide range of bundled packages and pricing options
• Developing an ecommerce progress bar that clarifies for customers the steps required to purchase packages
• Providing functionality for customers to review and edit their shopping cart prior to purchase
• Upgrading the web platform to the latest version of Drupal for enhanced security and performance
• Cleaning up configuration synchronization to standardize development workflows
• Replacing the deprecated mail server with Drupal Symfony Mailer
• Migrating the ElasticSearch appliance to Solr for better search functionality
• Providing APIs that expose data that can be imported into Sharepoint
• Compliance with WCAG AA standards
• Implemented of an SEO strategy to enhance visibility and support marketing goals
• Conducting User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and thorough QA to ensure a smooth transition
• Delivering ongoing maintenance and support to ensure the site remains up-to-date, secure, and that any bugs are promptly addressed
• Working in close partnership to determine the feasibility, functionality, and priority of ongoing enhancement initiatives prior to implementation
• Planning sessions for purposes of optimizing resources and prioritizing both long- and short-term goals
• Providing  training for Northwestel staff in using new tools and workflows, including Pantheon’s Cloud hosting dashboard
• Moving the website from on-premise hosting to a Pantheon Cloud environment.
• Leveraging Pantheon’s tooling, multi-dev environments, and CI/CD pipeline for streamlined development, deployment, and ease of releasing new code and pulling in the latest production database and files for testing
• Setting up Quicksilver automation, a feature in the Pantheon hosting platform that allows developers to automate key parts of their website development workflow.

Evolving Web’s partnership with Northwestel has transformed its digital platform into a sophisticated, modern, scalable, and user-friendly solution. We’ve consolidated services for customers, improved backend integrations, and enhanced platform stability. By streamlining the shopping cart experience, customers in remote regions now have easy access to a full range of online services. Our current support relationship extends far beyond a standard support mandate, as we act as trusted partners, advising on and implementing ongoing enhancements. Additionally, we have  increased compliance with accessibility and security standards, and empowered Northwestel’s internal team through training and collaboration. 

With a focus on long-term success, we continue to support Northwestel in addressing the unique challenges of serving Northern Canada with a superior digital experience for their customers.