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Case Studies
Article Reader Application Helps Drive Sales Revenue for Software Developer
Project at a Glance |
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RDA developed a Web application for customers to read from a library of business articles on a small business center website. The application enabled progressive new marketing opportunities for our client which have helped to drive sales conversion rates, on top articles, up to 4 percent. |
About Our Client
Our client is a leading software developer whose divisions focus on platform products and services, business, and entertainment and devices.
Background
Our client sought to dramatically improve the digital article-reading experience for their small business center customers through an easy-to-use Web application that would require no downloads and would launch an existing library of over 300 business articles. Goals established for the project included increasing revenue, winning additional business and increasing customer satisfaction.
Solution Detail
RDA helped to develop the Article Reader application: a dynamic, Web 2.0 control for customers to read business topic articles on a small business center website.
The project plan incorporated three construction iterations with summary tasks focusing on core Article Reader development, image integration and editing, and MNP article content publication. Each subsequent iteration built upon the prior iteration as well as initiating follow-on tasks. Additionally, the summary tasks for image integration and MNP content publication were organized in a manner to gain synergy with Article Reader development tasks and Quality Assurance (QA) inspection of Article Reader functionality as well as the rendering of the article portfolio.
Article Reader is highly readable and highly navigable, encouraging both deep (multi-page) and broad (multi-article) exploration of the content SBC has to offer. The 3-column, paginated layout & ability to easily flip between different sections and articles is designed to evoke the best elements of the newspaper reading experience while adjustable text sizing, dynamic screen scaling and search engine discovery brings in the best of the Web.
In addition to the primary Article Reader user control, a Preview Article Reader user control is included to provide the ability to include article previews in place of the primary Article Reader. This preview reader displays the primary reader control on client mouse over to provide the full reader experience to the user. Both readers dynamically adjust content to fit the size of the screen.
After the initial deployment, RDA and our client built a new user interface and supporting infrastructure for Article Reader, which is expected to generate one million extra page views per year and substantially increase their conversion rate.
Benefits
Article Reader enabled progressive new marketing opportunities, including interstitial and successive-story ad types, which have helped to drive conversion rates, on top articles, up to 4 percent.
The increase to a 4 percent conversion rate is a 400 percent increase over previous conversion rates. One of the most important results, from the eyes of the executive team on the project, was the application's excellent performance. A syndicated version of Article Reader is now available on some of our client's strategic partners' websites.
The SBC Article Reader also features a flexible architecture that allows our client to dramatically scale out their inventory of articles, more than doubling their original number of articles and garnering an additional 1 million annual page views for their small business center website.
Technically Speaking
In order to enable a dynamic user experience while maintaining a highly Search Engine Optimized (SEO) profile while supporting article content from a variety of sources, a blend of Web 2.0 technologies and a centralized, scalable architecture was used.
The following graphic depicts the Architecture and Process Flow:
XML forms the backbone architecture, as multiple XML source articles are translated, via InfoPath, into common XML Business Layers, which are again translated, via XSLT, into XHTML (Web pages). Finally, CSS & AJAX technologies are applied to render the dynamic UX for humans, while search engine robots just read the standard XHTML for keyword analysis and indexing.
