Ad Agency Concepts Seamlessly Blend into Web Design - Technical Overview

In the first half of the case study we took an end-user look at the Frasers Landing website. The advertising agency, CampaignMakers, and their client, Frasers Property, had engaged Foote Francis to develop an interactive Joomla CMS (Content Management System) website using their marketing concepts, branding and graphics. We now look at how Foote Francis assembled the technology that connected data about home designs, amenities and prices to the hamlet maps, floorplans and illustrations.

What kind of detail would a technical manager or project manager at the ad agency need to compare Foote Francis' web development consulting and tools to other web developers? How does Foote Francis make the website and data work? Foote Francis provides the technical side of a business-to-business web design solution using:

  • the Joomla web Content Management System (CMS) - a structure for websites that organizes pages, menus, text, images and “parts” inside web pages;
  • the F2 Platfform suite of multisite capable web services and modules, including tools for email newsletter management, event registration or customizable data management;
  • the K2 Joomla component - a 3rd party Joomla CMS plug-in for extending the default Joomla framework to provide custom content types and inner page templates, ensuring consistency of data loading and management by the end user, amongst other things;
  • the “F2 Data Mapper” component - a custom-developed Joomla plug-in developed by Foote Francis that act as “middle-ware” or the communication tool between the text and picture data stored in K2 and the Adobe Flash (or other) graphic web pages displayed on the Frasers Landing website, including search utilities to search both land estate and house information; and
  • Foote Francis expertise - the real-life web development experience with these “out of the box” and custom tools to reduce the amount of time needed to design and deploy an interactive website.

When a potential home buyer or a project manager looks at the Frasers Landing Masterplan page, the technical tools described above are translucent. The professional images, interactivity and Adobe Flash are being invisibly supported by the technology.

In the months prior to starting the Frasers Landing website, CampaignMakers and Frasers Property planned the schedule and interrelationship between various promotional mediums including print, broadcast communication and the web. Frasers Property spoke about ideas that would make the site useful to a potential home buyer, such as having text searches that tied back to a visual map of the available and unavailable lots. They wanted the site to evolve as the new developments were released and they wanted their administrative staff to be able to update sales information.

The prospective home buyer searches behind the scenes data and sees home design details. Or, the home buyer searches by criteria such as home size and/or price and selects from available lots displayed in a graphical map.

CampaignMakers had quality designers that created a variety of print and electronic graphics. There was a theme and continuity that needed to be maintained as the interactive sales tools were added. CampaignMakers acted as the project manager and partner with Foote Francis  - entrusting them to construct the technical functions of the site.

Foote Francis reviewed the visual media and samples of the data, such as lot size, price and home design options. Ensuring web development best-practices, part of their analysis was to reduce the complexity of the relationship between data and graphics by breaking the groups of text and image data down into components. To ensure the longevity of the website and adherence to the design for the end user loading new content, Foote Francis was vigilant about remembering the administrative staff that would be updating this data in-house.

As home design information changes and becomes available, Frasers Property sales staff enters the secure administrative side of the Joomla interface. The only software the sales staff needs is a web browser and the staff only needs to have office-administrative skills. The staff opens the K2 component and add pictures, floorplans, text and categorize these discreet items. The K2 categories and F2 Data Mapper resize and layout the pieces without the admin needing to use HTML, CSS or code. The seamless integration ensures that pictures are automatically resized to the correct resolution and size.

The sales staff sees a well organized user-interface that guides the update or addition of pictures, text and floorplans to the home design and hamlets.

CampaignMakers graphic artists provided the look and feel that potential home buyers would interact with and Foote Francis implemented this technically. Underneath Flash is Joomla, acting as a framework to support and organize the outline and sections of the site. Sitting inside Joomla is K2, a component for custom content types and inner page templates. The K2 component holds not only text such as lot size and price, but images such as the home design, video and audio. The finished, functioning website is updated in minutes and the home buyer sees the information published instantly.

The fourth component of the website is F2 Data Mapper. It connects the K2 custom data to the Flash graphics. The F2 Data Mapper module is invisible to the potential home buyer and to the administrative staff, but, acting as a conduit, is essential to the movement of information from the home buyer’s click to the retrieval of corresponding text and pictures.

Foote Francis is well versed in helping companies transmit and receive information about their products and customers. Unlike simple web-forms for requesting information, the fully implemented site employs best practices to find and instantly display custom information about a product in a layout that answers the end-users needs.

If you’d like to find out more about how Foote Francis can deliver your company’s product or service information to your customers, or if you are looking for a web designer that will build an effective website your client’s campaign, please contact us.

Creative Commons License Ad Agency Concepts Seamlessly Blend into Web Design - Technical Overview by Hayden Foote is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License