​Due to steady growth, Gazprom’s home-grown website was no longer meeting the business needs; the existing website was difficult to update, with high bounce rates and low traffic. The website did not support the company’s drive to recruit new talent to support its growth as well as Gazprom’s need to build its brand and reputation. The intranet site was ineffective in assisting employees to share resources resulting in low usage and SharePoint was not being optimised to facilitate document sharing or discoverability. Management decided that an integrated internal and external communications platform based on SharePoint would address the three problem areas.

​Based on previous experience, the company chose Avanade for its deep experience with SharePoint as well as its proven web design and usability expertise. Working alongside Gazprom’s marketing team, Avanade’s usability expert conducted a review of competitive websites and crystalized the corporate messaging. A 60-page website design was completed in two months which optimized the user experience. It took less than four months to develop the website and, because the templates were reusable for the Intranet, the delivery of the final integrated solution was accelerated.

​Traffic to the public website increased from 6,000 to 60,000 unique visits in the first 30 days of launching with a decrease in bounce rates and increased engagement. The website balances substance with complexity, leveraging advanced navigation features and social media elements including blogs, LinkedIn and YouTube to drive stickiness of both the internal and external sites. Due to the new site’s clean architecture, the client’s search results have increased so dramatically that the company has discontinued its use of Google AdWords.