 Introduction
With the launch of the new E-3
professional DSLR camera, Olympus wanted to offer their professional
customers even better support and a way to showcase the exceptional
work done with their products. Based on the success of previous work
SM2 had done for Olympus (the Olympus Australia website), SM2 were
contracted to build the E-pro website and the necessary components
and modules to make that happen.
The majority of the site is powered by
the "Pro Gallery" component, custom built to allow Olympus staff
to quickly and easily manage the website according to the work flow
that suits them best. This included automatic generation of thumbnail
images, custom field management for adding extra detail about
photographers and enhanced security across the board to deter people
from stealing information about not-yet-released products.
For site visitors, SM2 developed a clean
interface utilising technologies such as AJAX to speed up load times
and create a more interactive experience. The website centres around
individual photographers and their work, for which SM2 implemented a
dynamic flash-based gallery, again adding further interest to the
experience.
Along with the Pro Gallery, SM2 also
developed a custom Knowledge Base component to help Olympus
communicate support information to their photographers, a
custom login and search modules for visual consistency.
The majority of the development work was put in "under the
hood" to ensure that the heavy lifting is done by the software and
not user, the result is an effortless user-experience and ease-of-use
that you can only get through custom software.
Strategy
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With a detailed specification
given to us by Olympus we were able to identify and plan what was
necessary for the build process. We put together more technical
plans including a database structure which we handed back to Olympus
for approval.
Creative
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Interactive elements including the
flash gallery
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AJAX enhanced interface
Technology
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Joomla! Content Management System
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Custom "Pro Gallery" component
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Custom "Knowledge base"
component
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Custom Login module
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Custom Search module
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All components built with SM2's
Advanced MVC architecture for Joomla!
http://e-pro.olympus.com.au/
Launched October 2007.
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