New website for the AIHK social insurance fund Aargau

The old site had grown over the years: 321 statically linked URLs, separate topic areas, separate information sheets, separate forms. Insured persons did not search for technical terms like “IK statement”. They searched for a solution to their situation. The architecture, however, followed the internal org chart rather than real life.

Added to that was the technical state: Typo3 ran on a dated configuration, without structured data, without a valid sitemap, with a non-prioritised mobile variant. Insured persons reached for the phone — and that tied up support resources needed for more complex cases.

Three hard constraints were set from the start:

• Swiss data location mandatory. 1st pillar data, IV data, family allowances — no SaaS CMS with US hosting was on the table.
• Outlook and SMTP could never be interrupted. During the project, Microsoft 365 deprecated Basic Auth for SMTP. The migration to the Microsoft Graph API had to happen on the live system.
• Cutover deadline tied to an external event. The opening of the new AIHK building was on a fixed date. Either a double premiere or a delay into the summer.

Three requirements drove the platform choice: data must stay in Switzerland, editorial usability for a small team, speed both when building and when delivering pages.

The decision landed on Strapi 5 as a headless editorial system on a Swiss Coolify VPS — for insured persons that means: all content and images are stored in Switzerland, ISDS and FADP compliant, with daily server backups. The pages themselves are delivered statically with Astro 5 — for visitors this means content is there instantly, with no loading spinner, even on older phones.

SaaS systems like Webflow or Squarespace dropped out because they host primarily in the US. For a 1st pillar association fund that is not a viable path.

In classic relaunch projects the agency delivers a handful of sample pages — the homepage, one detail page, perhaps the contact form. Everything else — the bulk of the content — the editorial team migrates themselves. For a government website with hundreds of concerns and information sheets, that means several months of clicking work for a small team — or five-figure migration fees if the agency does take it on.

At the AIHK it was different. An AI-supported pipeline took on the Typo3 content, mapped it to the new Strapi structure and prepared it editorially. The editorial team only signed off the final texts and fine-tuned the five central concern areas. Instead of a handful of sample pages, the entire website arrived finished — with revised content.

For a social insurance fund with tight staffing this is the real lever decision — it is what makes the relaunch budgetable in the first place.

Instead of the Typo3 organisational view (“topic areas / information sheets / forms”), the new navigation guides insured persons through five life situations: working life & contributions, disability, military & civil defence, partnership & children, retirement & pension. Anyone expecting a child clicks on partnership & children, without needing to know which information sheet sits behind it.

In addition, a central search in the header delivers quick answers for insured persons who already know what they want — for example order an IK statement or report an address. Both paths — guided and direct — end up on the same detail page with a clear structure: For whom, How to proceed, Responsible office.

All information sheets and forms now sit in a central resource area with three filters: document type, topic area and field. A full-text search adds to the filters. This removes the historical collection pages — individual documents are reachable in a few clicks via any path.

A second effect: the documents can be updated automatically when the federal portal ahv-iv.ch publishes new versions. That keeps the site current without manual maintenance.

The real centrepiece of the website is the pension calculator form. Insured persons from around age 50 enter their AHV history here and receive an estimate of their future AHV retirement pension by post. Until now: download a PDF, print it, fill it in, send it back. Now: an eight-step online form with live validation and a structured handover of the data.

The form is no small task. Eight steps, nine marital-status variants from single to partnership dissolved by death, any number of previous marriages, any number of children, any number of stays abroad — and the Swiss special case of flexible retirement draw with early or deferred draw of individual pension shares. Conditional fields, live validation, mandatory-field logic, AHV-number format check, and a legally binding confirmation statement at the end.

Even so, delivery was fast. AI-supported analysis of the existing paper form plus a clickable prototype replaced the usual multi-month specification loop. The AIHK saw its requirements early as a working example and could give targeted feedback instead of describing from gut feel. The result: only two feedback rounds despite that complexity — one to clarify the special cases such as flexible retirement draw, one to fine-tune the confirmation statement. Then it went live.

In the end the form generates a PDF with the entered data via a JotForm integration — data stored in Germany, ISDS compliant. The AIHK receives a structured request directly in Strapi at the same time and can carry on without re-entering anything.

A website feels fast or sluggish in daily use — Google measures this with the public PageSpeed Insights performance report. For the AIHK that means: a neutral proof point on whether the site delivers what it promises.

Google scores every website in four categories. Performance measures how fast the page actually shows up for users. Accessibility checks whether people with disabilities — using a screen reader or keyboard navigation — can reach the content. Best Practices covers secure connections, clean code and basic data-protection. SEO assesses how well search engines can understand and list the page.

For the new ahv-aihk.ch the mobile report shows 99 / 100 Performance, and a clean 100 / 100 in Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO. In plain terms: the page is there immediately even on an older phone on the train, it works for blind users with a screen reader, it follows current security standards, and Google reliably finds every piece of content. Insured persons stay instead of bouncing — and the AIHK is visible in search results from day one.

The full performance report is publicly available at Google PageSpeed Insights.

The cutover on 25 May 2026 coincided with the opening of the new AIHK building — by plan, not by accident. Government websites are rarely communicated. A double premiere gives the migration an occasion and makes the digital improvement part of a bigger shift.

The Seed service package has been running since go-live. The next phase covers the automated form import from the federal portal ahv-iv.ch into the resource area — keeping the AHV-AIHK website current without manual maintenance.