Custom Content Management, Easy Publishing
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Web Programming |  |
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Diageo, the world's leading spirits, beer and wine company, and The Hotline, the leading daily news briefing on American politics, teamed up to create the Diageo/Hotline Poll. The poll is managed by FD, a specialist communications consultancy, focusing public opinion research on important national issues to inform and stimulate debate.
During the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, FD began daily releases of the Poll, but found its normal publishing process unwieldy. The site design and user experience was severely dated and not reflective of any modern technology or trend. They needed a new look and feel, but more than that, they needed a system to manage the content and publish each new release every day with only minimal reliance on the technical folks to make it happen.
Led by Mighty Ants' Jeof Oyster, the web team created an all new identity for the staid Poll. A fresh design leaned on a simplified layout that emphasized the key points from the headline, and easy to find links to the complete press releases and data gathered by the researchers. Though the Poll is particularly time-sensitive, we included access to the archive by highlighting the three most recent editions (particularly useful when the poll was released daily) plus a link to the complete archive.
But the beauty of the front end is rivaled by the ease of use of the content management application. In the past, each edition of the Poll was coded for the web by hand by the web team. The new content management system needed to allow the research team to manage the bulk of the content creation, manage past issues, update downloaded documents, and cut production time from a 6-8 hour back and forth process to only 1 hour.
There was already a business process being followed by the research and web technology teams, so the application was built to augment that existing process rather than replace it. A tabbed interface allowed the user to follow a simple step-by-step flow. Information that once had to be copied three times is now entered only once, and the system took care of mundane details like basic proofreading, automatically adding boilerplate, and connecting to the third party email system to manage sending emails.
In the end the application's simplicity and ease of use improved the work lives of the research and web staff alike. Everyone saved a lot of time in their day and the quality of each release was improved. By the end of the election season, the daily releases were humming along, and switching back to a monthly schedule was almost a disappointment.
If you have a business process that could be a whole lot easier with a custom web application, tell us about it and we'll help you craft a solution that fits your business.
This work was performed by FD's internal web consulting division, then led by Mighty Ants Managing Director, Jeof Oyster. Our screen shots show the work we provided; some sites go on without our input, and may have evolved on their own.
