B2B2C
Sales and Marketing Automation

The aim of the project was to redevelop the old website using Kentico MVC to improve UX and increase site performance. Also brand new modern design was implemented and additional functional features were added in order to increase target audience interest to the website (8-13 years old kids).

The Harold Grinspoon Foundation (HGF) creates opportunities to connect with Judaism and the Jewish community at key life moments. In addition to flagship programs that are active across North America and around the world, the HGF invests in Jewish life at home in Western Massachusetts.

Business has set up multiple goals for this project: Update the website look and feel, add interesting and interactive functional features in order to attract more potential users - children 8-12 years old. Improve site performance to allow up to 50K of users and up to 5K simultaneous user sessions during load peak periods. Integrate the application with external ERP platform Microsoft Dynamics NAV and custom API built on top of it. Improve editors/admins experience with management of content and data entities in Kentico admin through custom modules. Another goal from the business was accessibility improvements.

Key challenge was to develop a high performing website with quick response time during load peak time. Another quite interesting challenge was to make the page look and act differently depending on site mode: parent vs. child mode, that could be switched on any page in site header. Also the site awards users with different badges for different types of activity. The challenging part is the awarding logic around those badges.

Using Kentico MVC approach with Web Farm setup allowed us to build a website with a good performance meeting client's performance benchmark, meanwhile full control over the HTML output provides SEO benefits, clean and light markup, faster page load and improved overall site interaction. In addition caching features bring benefits to site performance allowing us to cache whatever we could cache on multiple layers of the system. Also we really like to use custom modules, as they allow us to build whatever data structure we need and provides clean, intuitive and consistent with the entire Admin section user interface.

PJ Our Way application has been integrated with Microsoft Dynamics NAV as well as custom API built on top of it. Traditionally Google Web Analytics has been added to the site to track users' interactions. Also we've integrated the app with EnjoyHint JavaScript plugin to improve new visitors experience with a guided site tour highlighting all site features and capabilities.

Probably traditionally for Kentico Experience the most used features by clients are Content Management related modules: Pages, Page types, Media libraries, Content (page) versioning, so we paid a lot of attention to them. For sure Forms; Custom tables and object versioning was utilized. Also we've set up Content staging to make content promotion to production environments as easy as a single click for our clients. To enable site search and crawling we've used Smart search. Key features that were used are: Content caching and Web farms to increase site performance; Custom modules to create custom classes and management interface for different custom entities; Page builder to make better content management experience for content editors.

See live site at pjourway.org

Industry: Non-profit

The purpose of the project was to refresh the site look and make it modern as well as add responsiveness to target mobile users, fix existing issues as well as improve user and editors experience and site performance.

Established in 1977, Digitron Semiconductors is a broad-line, high mix/low volume supplier of high-reliability discrete products to military, aerospace, industrial, and commercial markets. Digitron semiconductor devices protect circuits, amplify and condition signals, produce, distribute, convert and regulate power. Digitron specializes in delivering high reliability Zener diodes, transient voltage suppressors, rectifiers and transistors, designed to meet unique customer requirements as they pertain to physical, electrical, test, screening and/or operating conditions. Products are produced to meet commercial, industrial and military quality standards.

Client was looking for solving one of the biggest problem of the old site - inability to extend inventory with new product types without quite massive development efforts. Additionally, businesses wanted to make the site look modern and target any possible screen factor providing their users with an awesome experience despite the device they are using. Old site somewhat lacked performance and had minor issues here and there, which impacted users' experience. In terms of user experience the goal was to enable site visitors to find what they are looking for in five clicks. Also validation for page types was not configured correctly and caused site crashes if the editor enters invalid value.Consequently the goal was to fix mentioned issues to lower bounce rate and save editors time and improve users' journey for both.

One of the biggest challenges of the project was implementing dynamic product families that would allow client to manage fields, their appearance on the site with appropriate units and abbreviations, manage filter options and finally add and configure new product types. All of the above required us to invent a simple in use mechanism that would allow client to change the appearance of product related pages without code interaction, but configured through Kentico admin UI. Being data heavy application site performance was another challenge we had to solve. And last but not least was quite tricky search that would search not products only, but related products according to certain algorithms.

For the dynamic product types we've built Kentico Custom Modules to provide product type editing capabilities: here site editors are able to create or edit product types, add or remove fields, specify what fields are used for filtering on a public page, specify field units, fields' visibility and order in the products listing grid. Another section of the module provides editing capabilities for product data with convenient search and navigation options. On another side of things we had to implement dynamic page templates that would present data according to products' custom module  configuration, build filters and product listing grid on the fly vs being hard coded in page templates and transformation. Moving thousands of products from the content tree also allowed us to improve performance and comply with Kentico best practice. Unfortunately that was not enough for requested site performance and we had to apply best optimization practice in terms of content optimization and Kentico configuration by disabling unnecessary processing and heavy usage of caching wherever it was possible. Regarding search we had to customize default indexing algorithms and add custom content there in order to link related parts and search results ensure relevance level. Additionally we had to parse PDF documentation and use particular pieces of it as a custom search index content.

As a result site traffic increased for 136% compared to the same period of previous year. Taking into account the current situation with lock-down because of CoVid-19 this is a really impressive increase and we expect even more when business gets back to normal.

Features: content management, product catalog, extremely frexible inventory management, product list and details appearance management, excel data import, search

See live site at  digitroncorp.com

Industry: Semiconductors (manufacturing)

Workspace planning never was a simple task. Especially when we talk about budget estimation. Our client had a dream to change that once and forever. We were lucky enough to help them make their dream come true. With the tool we’ve built, clients get an easy way to visualize what an office will look like starting from a floor plan and ending with decorations. But the real magic comes into play when switching from view to the numbers - the tool allows clients’ sales manager to quote workspace planning budget in a couple of minutes and prepare an offer with all the details and pricing right in front of their clients and deliver it via email.

Aside from the vital functionality, the application provides incredible user experience. User journey is intuitive and obvious on every stage meanwhile allowing users to experiment with options to find a best fit for them.

The tool allowed clients to speed up sales significantly and decrease deal closing cycles.

Industry: Furniture

Philadelphia Commercial web site was built for Shaw Industries Group, Inc., one of the world's largest carpet manufacturers with more than $6 billion in annual revenue and approximately 22,000 employees worldwide. It is headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, and is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

The main intention of the project was to update look and fill of the site and improvement of overall site performance by shifting to Kentico MVC platform. Business wanted to make site look modern and target any possible screen factor providing their users with awesome experience despite the device they are using. Additionally, being content heavy, old site demonstrated lack in performance.

Most of the challenges were related to the fact that a lot of features available in Portal Engine are not present in Kentico MVC and implementation of them. In most cases those were some web parts and widgets those client got used to.

Kentico MVC provides much better control over page's HTML output allowing to build much cleaner and lighter markup meanwhile does not set any limitations for UI developers allowing them to build literally whatever they need. As long as Kentico MVC is built on newer and modern framework (comparing to previous versions) it shows much better performance out of the box providing really fast public pages as well as administration section.

Despite the fact Kentico MVC misses widgets and web parts it gives developers mechanism to build their custom widgets with no limits allowing to implement any required functionality.

With site release we were able to increase number of new users for 17%, users in general for 11%, sessions - 18%, doubled page views and decrease bounce rate from 42% to 1.03%.  

Features: content management, product catalog, integrations with internal product inventory and image service, web farm

Here you can find live site philadelphiacommercial.com
 

Industry: Textile, flooring (manufacturing)

For large organizations with multiple branches, chains or franchise content production and content marketing introduces huge expenses. In order to cut off some of those expenses we suggested a solution that worked quite well for the client - content syndication.

The solution allows clients to produce content centrally and share it with their franchisees. Additionally they get all the updates to the syndicated content automatically unless they decide to manage their content (either all or certain content items).

Franchisees can see all the syndicated content they use on their site, remove from their site particular content as well as add new content from the central repository. However they are free to create completely new content that will remain unique for their site only. Making changes to the content by a separate franchisee will just warn a user that the content item will be unlinked from the central repository and they will need to keep maintaining it.

System allows to control content accessibility, so two different franchisees might have access to a different content if necessary. Also it is possible to control access level for content: some content has to be inherited by franchisee with no option to modify, meanwhile other content might be adjusted, some content is mandatory to inherit, but other is optional.

Such approach goes far beyond and allows to reuse content not on web sites only, but consume it from the mobile application or literally any other communication channel. As long as the content is flexible in terms of presentation, franchisees might either use one, defined by franchise, site template/theme, or have an option to choose from a set of predefined themes as well as be able to switch between them at any moment of time. And last, but not least, they might control page appearance adding predefined widgets, like carousel, image gallery or list of articles to their pages making them completely unique.

This solution provided our client with a really flexible mechanism for producing and controlling content and allowed to reduce content management efforts significantly and cut off expenses as there is no need for each franchisee to produce, manage and keep in sync all their content, but inherit professional content developed centrally. Also it allowed clients to save on people training and education in terms of content management platform.

On another hand franchisees got professional content with some level of control over it, a flexible system for content management with an ability to manage what and how users see on their sites at affordable cost.

Industry: Informational Technologies

Simple but really handy mobile-first calculator web application was built to allow end users to estimate the cost of a mortgage according to their financial situation and term, or estimate their refinancing options and apply for it. Application notifies the responsible manager as well as stores requests into the client's internal system, so it could be processed right away.

New and extremely efficient user interface allowed us to keep all the key information important to decision making on a single screen providing end users with exceptional user experience.

Additionally this tool provides useful features for loan officers allowing them to quote mortgage or refinancing for their client on a fly in a couple of clicks as well as store and review client information and a history.

So the application allowed to process clients’ inquiries faster as well as keep all necessary data in a single place with outstanding user experience and navigation capabilities.

As a result, application allowed the client to increase sales and engage with more new clients.

Industry: Finance, Mortgage