Case Study: Pharma / Healthcare Sector multilingual, fully bespoke content-managed website with product catalogue

We won a competitive pitch against longer established firms Worth Digital and Cubeworks, for the re-development of the Pharma sector, pan-European Adelphi Healthcare Packaging website.

In order to improve upon the previous website, it was necessary to start afresh and re-build the entire site on our own Content Management Framework. This is in contrast to an off-the-shelf CMS package which is restricted in its functionality compared to open source frameworks which can be combined to create a totally bespoke CMS tailored to the exact requirements of widely varying client sectors and the resulting sector-specific requirements in terms of unique functionality required from the systems we build.

In planning and development, we use agile techniques to rapidly develop systems through iterative prototyping and constant collaboraton with client stakeholders. User-centred design fits very neatly with agile development and all our complex web build projects commence with comprehensive requirements gathering, resulting in a signed-off requirements specification and project scope.

These requirements are then fed into Information Architecture, both technical and design. We consider IA to be so important that we include it in every requirements gathering client project phase. Rather than static wireframes, outputs from IA include dynamic, wireframe-based prototypes. You can view the IA prototype for Adelphi here

 

Technical IA was vital to the success of this complex project.

 

The complexities lie in getting the Content Management System's functionality correct first time, which underpins the other complexities of running the entire site (including functional widgets) in 3 languages and delivering a large product database, again in 3 languages, with native-speaking translators specialising in the Medical/Pharma sector and therefore familiar with niche idioms, abbreviations and technical terminology in their respective languages.

It is worth re-stating that, in most instances, off-the-shelf or enterprise Content Management Systems are a false economy to effective and efficient delivery infrastructures. Whilst we naturally work with these systems, in all development languages / paradigms, when they *have* to be used as part of a client's infrastructure, when we are given leeway to implement the infrastructure ourselves, our preference will always be to build a totally bespoke content management system, precisely tailored to the client's requirements.

Compare & Contrast

We develop these systems using open content management frameworks and web services. The logic is simple and illustrated by comparing this project - multilingual / localised corporate site with large product catalogue; with our most recent launch, Moviemogul.co.uk - a niche community-driven online Film festival with competitions, showcases of exclusive material and a totally dynamic series of systems powering the user's experience. Quite clearly, the requirements demanded of the CMS could not be much more different between these projects.

The figure below illustrates the very intuitive and powerful Content Manager interface:

Bespoke CMS fully featured management console

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Having produced a detailed specification from requirements gathering and IA, we went on to produce creative concepts culminating in 3 different potential creative routes. The agreed Requirements set the tone for the site creative, and so our more radical creative ideas were set aside to drive an established (75 years+) brand identity and reinforce Adelphi's reputation as a rock-solid, dependable operator in a serious industry sector.

We then built the correct, SEO-optimised and highly functional CMS / management backend to suit both general ad hoc users and regular ongoing users with the remit to keep the site up-to-date.

Our creative designs were then implemented as dynamic page templates and all processes driving the very functional site were implemented and fully tested. 

Selected screenshots can be found in "Our Work"

After acceptance testing, the site was moved from our development sandbox to a live environment, running on DU's managed server infrastructure.

We are currently consulting for Adelphi, planning their integrated digital and traditional marketing strategy which we hope we'll be able to implement, measure and improve on an ongoing basis. We do like long, symbiotic relationships with clients and always seek to prove ourselves a dependable partner. 

Adelphi Healthcare Packaging can be viewed here: http://adelphi-hp.com