Corporate Website - Sinodis
Client needs
Sinodis having grown at a fast pace in the past few years, its previous website did not match company’s recent ambitions anymore and therefore, had to undergo a major redesign. The main source of discomfort with old website came from the lack of accessibility and user experience resulting in a difficult navigation through brands and products. Furthermore, brands and products’ content organization having become complex and confusing, updating the website was a tedious process that required a tech savvy person to modify the source code. It had become clear that the construction of a well structured data system was critical to the success of the redesign and should provide a user friendly, robust, and scalable website from the front and back-end.
Collaboration with Davyin
Working closely with the Sinodis’ marketing, design and IT departments, we carried an in-depth study of the new website’s ergonomics, navigation schemes and graphic user interface which served as a basis for the development of the design and data structure. A clear development plan including best practices, graphic user interface widgets, was proposed by Davyin Internet Solutions’ project manager to facilitate collaboration with Sinodis’ marketing and design teams. Through regular back-and-forths we were able to coordinate development, testing of the back-end and provide usability support to ensure Sinodis’ administrators and webmasters would be able to take over the project.
Key features
- In response to one of Sinodis’ major requests, all the brands and products’ content was restructured and organized around a powerful product catalog management tool. Visitors are not only able to browse easily through the clear hierarchical category tree structure provided by the catalog, but they can also find information on brands and precise details on each product such as its shelf life, weight, bar code, etc... It would not have been a complete tool without the ability to filter, sort or search by name and bar code through all products in the catalog. On top of that, visitors are allowed to print results of search queries, which also serve as a listing creation and printing tool for Sinodis’ internal inventory and sales teams.
- The website was fully equipped with Drupal, one of the top content management system (CMS) currently on the market, allowing Sinodis to have a non tech savvy person administer and update content internally without having to request any external assistance. Any section of content on the website, such as products, company events, etc..., can be managed and modified through listings, simple menu navigations and edit forms. It has not only become a breeze for webmasters to update site’s content but they can now also ensure content is accurate and up-to-date at all times. Thanks to Drupal's modular structure, website is fully extensible and allows addition of new functionalities as Sinodis' online strategy evolves.
- Sinodis’ targeted customers being both Chinese and international, an efficient internationalization (I18N interface: Multilanguage management)and language management system was setup to help translation of any content into English and Chinese on any section of the website. Content can either be mirrored or just present on one part of the website for a particular language. All the necessary multilanguage tools have been deployed and now enable further translation of the website into any other language.
- Davyin Internet Solutions made use of the lightweight open source JQuery JavaScript library with a rich graphical user interface (GUI) to dramatically improve user experience and ensure Sinodis makes the most return on its new products’ catalog and site’s content organization. A JavaScript “MS Explorer” tree-like menu allows visitors to intuitively browse through the products catalog or brands content. Other popular JavaScript widgets were used, such as the lightbox or DHTML menus to provide a fresh look and feel. Furthermore, each dynamic element was integrated to the website under strict design rules to guarantee page links and markup optimization, HTML/CSS W3C validation and compliance or search engine friendly directives, for the website to be up to the best international standards.
- To successfully reach its target audience, a wide range of content sections and functionalities were put at Sinodis’ disposal. Products are put forward through recipes illustrating how they can be used by visitors in practical and real-life examples. Company’s activity is reflected through its Hot Events or Corporate News sections bringing Sinodis’ marketing department closer to its online users. In addition, a monthly newsletter system comes to complete the full panel of online marketing tools deployed to effectively gain more exposure online and reach more consumers.
Results
Once new website was released, Sinodis experienced a boost in its Public Relations’ (P.R.) activity as they could better communicate thanks to the new functions deployed on the redesigned site. Maintaining such a substantial volume of products and data has not only become more efficient and accurate, it has also heavily cut down on-going maintenance and update costs. Sinodis’ website perfectly illustrates how our know-how in the internet industry can be combined with their great experience in the food distribution market.
Technology used
PHP/XHTML/CSS/Javascript
Testimonial
Duccio Alabiso, marketing manager
Working with Davyin Internet Solutions was particularly made easy thanks to their great language and communication skills (Chinese, English and French). They also convinced us of the potential of using Open Source code since we are now able to take over any small change in-house. By bringing our attention on the importance of user experience and compliance to international web standards, I believe they were able to understand our brand image and open our perspectives of its evolution online.
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