Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs (WDVA)

Transforming the Website Experience.

Project Brief.

The Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs (WDVA) supports and advocates for Wisconsin veterans and their families through a wide range of programs, benefits, and outreach. Ascedia partnered with WDVA to redesign their aging website—transforming a cluttered, outdated, and inaccessible platform into a modern, compliant, and user-friendly experience.

Challenge

WDVA’s legacy site was running on a legacy .NET CMS and had become difficult to maintain. The platform was visually outdated, poorly organized, and inaccessible to key audiences. Common complaints included cluttered content, non-functional search, broken links, and an overall poor user experience—especially on mobile. Internally, staff struggled with content updates, document management, and analytics visibility.

Key issues included:

  • Non-mobile friendly design and inconsistent page structure
  • No visual or editorial standards
  • Cluttered navigation and outdated taxonomy
  • Inaccessible PDFs and documents
  • No usable analytics tracking or performance benchmarks
  • No system for organizing key resources, forms, and benefits content

Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs (WDVA)

Client Details.

  • Organization: Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs (WDVA)
  • Industry: Government & Municipal
  • URL: https://dva.wi.gov

Services Provided.

  • Strategic Planning
  • Experience Design
  • Application Development

Project Solution.

  • Conducted technical, content, and visual audits
  • Led stakeholder interviews across teams
  • Consulted on taxonomy, content strategy, and accessibility
  • Designed a clean, accessible user interface guided by feedback from internal WDVA teams
  • Rebuilt the site in WordPress, with modular Gutenberg blocks to ensure layout consistency, accessibility, and performance
  • Migrated hosting to Pantheon to ensure reliability and speed
  • Created a new document library and resource structure
  • Developed templates that support ADA compliance and editorial flexibility
  • Provided training for WDVA’s internal web team to manage and maintain content
  • Delivered a content-editing experience optimized for non-technical users
  • Offered best practices for file management, document uploads, and metadata
  • Replaced broken analytics setup with a full GTM + GA4 implementation
  • Configured tracking across key pages and interactions
  • Coordinated with state IT teams for DNS planning and deployment
Wisconsin Department of Veteran's Affairs landing page
Wisconsin Department of Veteran's Affairs homepage
Wisconsin Department of Veteran's Affairs suicide prevention resources

Project Outcomes.

WDVA has seen impressive results since launching the new website. Below are results compared to May 1-7, 2024 including Average engagement time up by 6,526.76%!

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Increase in Google Search position

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Increase in sessions

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Increase in pageviews

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Increase in active users