Decrease the cost and complexity of operating four distinct web properties while simultaneously improving demand generation across all Van Metre companies.
Adopt a scalable architecture with components that can easily be shared by all four sites. In addition, implement centralized management of users, blogs and digital assets across the properties for easy maintenance, updates, customization and campaign support without sacrificing the distinct focus of each site.
• Ensure brand continuity while enabling site customization
• Manage content from a single interface
• Rapidly deploy microsites and campaign landing pages
• Unified customer data set means user experiences can by dynamically tailored across all sites
• Decreased support demand as marketing handles content publishing and management tasks on their own
• Reduction in time and cost to simultaneously maintaining multiple web properties
• Faster development and deployment of new features and functionality across multiple web properties
• Faster and more cost-efficient integration of new 3rd party software or data solutions across multiple web properties
Understanding the functional requirements and vision for each web property—Van Metre Homes, Van Metre Apartments, Van Metre Commercial and Van Metre Companies—we identified all the components that could be used across all four. Our designers and developers then explored a variety of use-cases for each component, making sure they were flexible enough to work well on each site. We took an agile approach to design, collaborating with the Van Metre team 24/7 using the InVision platform and quickly making micro-pivots—all reducing time to complete.
In our development planning, the early focus was on uncovering innovative opportunities to ensure a more efficient process while addressing long-term requirements for scalability and extensibility of components. We elected to leverage Pimcore, an award-winning, open-source, enterprise-caliber content management solution, as the foundation of the multisite platform. Pimcore is based on the most-up-to-date technology stack of PHP/Symfony, MySQL, Elastic Search, Mongo DB and Varnish, and is built on a standardized, robust, modular, open and service-oriented architecture using 100% API drive—a perfect match for Van Metre’s needs.
We used Zurb Foundation, a semantic, readable, flexible, responsive, and completely customizable front-end framework, and adhered to all development best practices outlined by Pimcore. We also provided detailed comments in the code for each feature/component to ensure future extensibility and long-term maintenance regardless of who’s using the technology stack.
