Posted by: todd on March 22, 2005 @ 12:38:09 pm
www.eaw.com and www.eawcommercial.com
Brand Bio: EAW (Eastern Acoustic Works) is the worldwide technological and market leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance professional loudspeaker systems while its EAW Commercial (EAWC) line of installed audio products is quickly becoming recognized as the premiere commercial audio brand in the industry. EAW products are found in high-end sound reinforcement applications including sporting arenas, churches and nightclubs and on major musical tours, while its EAWC commercial systems are found in airports, stadiums and clubs worldwide.
Process/Challenge: Soon after I joined LOUD technologies all marketing operations for the EAW brand and its EAW Commercial line were moved from our East Coast offices to our Woodinville, WA headquarters, where all brand marketing activities are hosted. Subsequently, I was given the responsibility to migrate and incorporate the EAW and EAW Commercial websites.
The EAW site alone had more than 200 SKUs each with supporting graphics and documentation to communicate. The real challenge, however, came when I was tasked with bringing these sites, which were built with LAMP-based technology tools (Perl, Unix, Embedded Perl) that lacked documentation, over to IIS, ASP and vbscript. This process of rewriting both entire sites (EAW and EAWC) required six weeks.
I used three logical steps to accomplish the integration:
- Identify the tools being used
- Determine how they worked and why they were used
- Choose which tools we kept and incorporated.
The site not only needed a rebuild, it was also quite messy from a design and architectural point of view. While rebuilding the site to fit into our systems, we took the opportunity to give it a fresh, clean look that reflected the brand’s new identity and to make the UI more intuitive to the customer.
Results: The complete overhaul of the EAW and EAWC websites, allowed us to re-build online tools for internal staff to post new articles online, keeping high-profile stories fresh on the homepage – a key resource for the brand’s target market. By rewriting these tools using ASP, VBScript and ASP File Upload, we cut the necessary steps by more than half while creating a more user-friendly interface. After incorporating it into all of our brand websites, the PR staff uses this tool weekly, placing them ahead of every other brand in the industry.
