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Think London

Content managed corporate website using OpenCMS

This case demonstrates Double Eye’s expertise in designing and delivering websites backed by content management solutions, and our ability to develop technical solutions for the Java platform.

Content Management allows website owners to take control of their content, making additions and updates without the need for technical skills, or further involvement from their digital agency. They provide a cost effective solution for organisations looking to frequently publish information to their online channels.

The Context

Think London, is responsible for attracting foreign corporations to invest in London. The service they provide is free and they specialise in helping foreign corporations establish and grow operations in London. Think London are a government agency funded by the London Development Agency (LDA) and the Greater London Authority (GLA). They compete for business with similar organisations from other European capitals.

The Objectives

Double Eye were asked to develop and implement a strategy which would allow Think London to maximise their use of online channels to engage with their clients.

The key success factors for the project were:

• To organise and publish the large volume of frequently updated business analysis, reports and statistics commissioned by Think London.
• To ensure potential customers could easily find the information they needed amongst the large volume of information available.
• To allow Think London to frequently expand, update and re-organise the information available on their online channels.
• To capture information about potential clients and their needs from their websites.

The Process

Workshops were held with key stakeholders at Think London to determine the detailed requirements for the strategy. Working from the workshop outputs we developed a solution which included:

• Creating a new corporate website which was the hub of all information for the Organisation. The website would provide information in a number of languages including non-western character sets.

• Implementation of the OpenCMS content management system to manage all content on the website, and allow the site structure and information taxonomy to change and grow.

• Create an email newsletter system allowing Think London to easily create and distribute general and industry / segment / location specific email newsletters.

• Integrate their Geographical Information System (GIS) into the website, providing users with the ability to create custom reports based on geo-spacial data.

• Integrate their preferred supplier network database into the website, providing users with the ability to search for preferred suppliers across many industries.

• Create a secure content system allowing Think London to capture information from users in return for access to premium content. It was a key requirement that Think London could customise the information requested per item of content and users must only ever be asked for an item of information once.

• An e-forms system allowing Think London to easily generate and publish forms to the website and route responses to internal email addresses. Responses could be routed to different addresses based on the information provided.

Implementation began by creating the information and technical architectures. As the main website would be under OpenCMS control, it was essential these were designed in tandem. A rapid prototype was built to visualise the website structure and test the integration with OpenCMS.

Technical development began after all prototyping issues were resolved. The technical solution involved deployment and customisation of OpenCMS, plus the development of a bespoke applications to deliver the e-forms, newsletter and online database functions. Low cost, rapid development for the bespoke applications was achieved using the Grails application framework running on the Groovy programming language. Both were integrated seamlessly with OpenCMS.

During technical development, the site look and feel was developed by Think London’s branding agency, Chaos. Double-eye provided overall Project Management and managed the design process to ensure the final designs could be implemented on the site architecture / OpenCMS solution.

Following development, the site was loaded with content, tested and deployed onto the hosting platform commissioned by Double-Eye.

The Outcome

The site was launched in September 2007 and received an extremely positive response from both Think London stakeholders and end users who took the time to email in comments.

Since launch, Think London has been able to take care of all their content publishing needs using OpenCMS.

Visit the Think London website

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© Double Eye - 2007

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