BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) today announced that The Henry Ford, the internationally recognized cultural destination for American history and innovation, is leveraging Progress® Sitefinity® CMS to maximize digital experiences for its three million online guests.

A historic landmark, The Henry Ford’s collection holds more than 26 million artifacts, spanning 300 years of American history. It welcomes 1.7 million guests annually, and another three million via its web and mobile presence. At any given time, only 5% of its collection is on display on the museum floor. To drive visits to the complex and provide guests an opportunity to view all of its assets from anywhere in the world, the organization centralized and digitized its collection. This required consolidating more than 1.5 terabytes of data from over 40 disparate web properties into a single, consumable, easy-to-navigate digital experience that is also mobile friendly.

“With 50% of our online traffic coming from mobile devices, the user experience had to be seamless. It also had to be easy-to-use and optimized for search. Based on these requirements, our partner, Perficient Digital, recommended Progress Sitefinity,” said Matt Majeski, Director, Digital and Emerging Media at The Henry Ford. “With the Progress Sitefinity content management system, we can pull together disparate data and implement analytics across the unified website, enabling informed business decisions about how to optimize the user experience.”

Using the Progress Sitefinity content management system, The Henry Ford’s Digital and Emerging Media team created relationships between data and stories about the artifacts. Consolidating search across all data sources enabled people around the world to find information about the organization and its artifacts more easily. For example, when the Rosa Parks story was launched online, within six months 43,000 people visited the web site and spent a total of 265,000 minutes on that story alone.

”Our main undertaking was to consolidate many years’ worth of website content management systems integrations and multiple types of data repositories, to create a unified data platform. The process of pulling disparate systems into one experience is something we’re seeing more and more,” said Peter Ferraro, Solutions Architect, Perficient Digital. “Progress Sitefinity is an ideal solution for helping organizations such as Henry Ford. It provides a consistent way of entering and managing content, and the ability to create custom controls for data integration.”

Since launching the new site, visits have increased 12%, digital collections usage is up 155% and referrals from social media are up more than 100%. Online revenue is up 24%, as the integrated web presence has also opened new ecommerce revenue streams, such as the purchase of high-resolution images. Importantly, the new site has enabled The Henry Ford to reach new audiences.

“The Henry Ford is a great example of our evolving digital world. The Digital and Emerging Media team recognized early on a huge opportunity and took the right steps to engage with a larger audience via its digital channels,” said Anton Hristov, Director, Product Marketing, Progress, “The end result has been tremendous for the visibility of the museum and in ensuring these historically-relevant artifacts can be enjoyed by many. We were thrilled to be an enabler of their success.”

The Henry Ford also used the Progress Sitefinity content management system to simplify site maintenance, resulting in a 50% improvement in efficiency. Next steps for The Henry Ford include ongoing blending of the physical museum and digital properties with additional kiosk features, geolocation and wayfinding.

For more information about Progress Sitefinity, please visit www.sitefinity.com.

For more details about The Henry Ford story, click here or view additional customer successes at https://www.progress.com/customers.

About The Henry Ford

The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan is an internationally-recognized history destination that explores the American experience of innovation, resourcefulness and ingenuity that helped shape America. A national historic landmark with an unparalleled Archive of American Innovation, The Henry Ford is a force for sparking curiosity and inspiring tomorrow’s innovators. More than 1.7 million visitors annually experience its five attractions: Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, The Ford Rouge Factory Tour, The Benson Ford Research Center and The Henry Ford Giant Screen Experience. A continually expanding array of content available online provides anytime, anywhere access. The Henry Ford is also home to Henry Ford Academy, a public charter high school which educates over 500 students a year on the institution’s campus. In 2014, The Henry Ford premiered its first-ever national television series, The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, showcasing present-day change-makers and The Henry Ford’s artifacts and unique visitor experiences. Hosted by news correspondent and humorist, Mo Rocca, this Emmy®-winning weekly half-hour show airs Saturday mornings on CBS. For more information please visit our website thehenryford.org.

About Progress

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) is a global leader in application development, empowering the digital transformation organizations need to create and sustain engaging user experiences in today's evolving marketplace. With offerings spanning web, mobile and data for on-premise and cloud environments, Progress powers startups and industry titans worldwide, promoting success one customer at a time. Learn about Progress at www.progress.com or 1-781-280-4000.

Progress and Sitefinity are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the US and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161206005170/en/