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Case Study: Motivational Steps Motivational Steps was created in 2001 to provide presentation and workshop services to businesses, schools, organizations and charities in Ontario. The company wanted to create a web-site that was both informative and engaging. Building on their existing brand we worked closely with Motivational Steps to develop marketing and functional aspects into the finished site.
Elements of the Solution Before creating the site design we considered what kinds of content and functionality the site should have. It was decided that the site should support the following:
The Design Motivational Steps already had significant brand elements such as a logo, common typography and layout. We introduced a calming and friendly aspect to the design with the use of a green theme. Navigation was achieved through a simple set of buttons placed along the left. These buttons also kept state - showing a highlight to help the site visitor understand where in the site they were. Streaming Video To showcase the presenter's talent we created a section of the site to enable visitors to watch past presentations. Video was encoded to the RealMedia format, making it accessible for visitors on Windows-based PC's, Apple Macintoshes and Unix/Linux users. In keeping with accessibility, the video is encoded for multiple bandwidths, allowing users to experience the format most appropriate for their Internet connection. Electronic Postcards Solar Nexus Solutions suggested that a free Electronic Postcard service would be a great way to help market the site and provide something to the community. Visitors to the site can send an unlimited number of free cards to friends, colleagues and family. A postcard engine was developed to handle the process of sending and receiving cards. The engine organizes cards into collections. These collections group cards into logical choices for the site visitor. Cards can be in any media format that is appropriate: the site makes use of both static images and Macromedia Flash animations in the cards it has created. Senders follow a familiar process to sending a card:
Recipients receive an e-mail to inform them that they have received a card. This e-mail contains a direct URL to where the card can be retrieved. The postcard engine ensures against retrieving other people's cards by "URL guessing" - helping to protect privacy. Guestbook To provide a sense of community, this feature allows visitors to sign a virtual Guestbook and leave behind a comment. Privacy concerns are addresses by allowing signees to volunarily leave their contact information (such as e-mail address) but restrict it from public view in the Guestbook. Comments, Feedback and Booking Requests A comment engine was constructed to handle various types of feedback from the site visitor. This includes comments about the site, requests for information and also booking inquiries. Visitors to the site can request a return contact from Motivational Steps by indicating their contact preferences (such as via e-mail, phone, fax or mail). This feedback is collected to a central database and also e-mail directly to Motivational Steps. Engagement Listings and Event Registration In addition to being a marketing vehicle, the site also provides an event system that site visitors can use to learn of upcoming Motivational Steps events that may be of interest. More importantly, visitors to the site can register for events ahead of time - most often receiving a discount. The event engine keeps track of all future events and manages registrations for them. Remaining event capacity is tracked to avoid over-booking as well as the usual "What, When, Where" information. Registration information is stored to a central database where information can be extracted to ensure registered guests can be identified at check-in time. Mailing List Management Many professional speakers maintain one-or-more e-mail-based mailing lists to communicate their messages to interested people. The Motivational Steps solution includes a mailing list anagement feature-set that enables people to subscribe, confirm subscription status and unsubscribe from one-or-more mailing lists. Because of the increasing problem of unsolicited e-mail (spam as it's cmmonly known) the solution includes some anti-spam protection methods. Subscribers are required to confirm their subscription via e-mail. This step helps to confirm the identity of the subscriber by ensuring that other people cannot subscribe using someone else's e-mail address. What You Don't See! In addition to the site and it's features, there are some more subtle touches that lend polish to the overall solution. The site has a built-in user tracking system that keeps track of user-entered information and can pre-fill forms and offer personalized content. Architecture The site uses a three-tier approach, common in many of our Internet solutions. We consider each of these tiers (or layers) below:
This approach is significant if you consider one of the primary strategies is to seperate functionality from design. This gives Motivational Steps the flexibility to make design changes and even integrate the features to completely new situations, without costly software re-development. An example of how Solar Nexus Solutions is thinking of sustained value to your business! Technologies To implement the architecture, we have used aspects of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition platform and open-source, standards-based technology. This reduces expense without sacrificing future flexibility. Jakarta Tomcat, from the Apache Software Foundation, provides an application server capable of serving applications written using Java Servlets and Java Server Pages. We implemeted the presentation layer (the site pages) as Java Server Pages. These interface the site visitor to the logic layer implemented as Java Servlets. This combination allows us to fully seperate the logic from the design. MySQL is used for the central database. It is a fast, extremely robust and capable SQL database. Through ODBC on the desktop Motivational Steps can query site data in real-time. The whole site is made available on the Internet via the Apache web server running on one of Solar Nexus Solutions' Unix servers. End Result: Business Benefit Motivational Steps enjoys a sustained community of visitors and attracts new visitors all the time. The site acts as an advertising and marketing tool - getting the Motivational Steps message to potential customers. In addition it reduces the time for processing inquiries and gathering information. Site usage is constantly monitored to understand what aspects of the site are being most used. This combined means that Motivational Steps can concentrate on their core business: presentation and workshops. The solution is effective because it's transparent and doesn't require significant on-going investment, but continues to deliver value. Motivational Steps is now working with Solar Nexus Solutions again to develop the site feature-set as a service for other Motivational Speakers and similar businesses. Nortel Networks recently purchased the postcard system to enable it's sales force to send holiday greetings to it's customers. Because of the architecture employed by Solar Nexus Solutions, the system was integrated into Nortel Networks infrastructure with a completely new design in a single day!
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