Posts from the ‘Case Studies’ Category
OBJECTIVE
The objective for Saint John’s Health Center (SJHC) objective was to grow the core medical service lines, recruit top physicians and surgeons, and increase brand awareness in the West Los Angeles area. To attract these top physicians, SJHC launched a multi-million dollar rebranding effort and offered each physician a dedicated online program to promote their respective department. The medical director, or department head, was provided with their own website and ability to run marketing campaigns throughout the year. These online programs were developed and managed by the Marketing Communications & Creative Services Department, essentially SJHC’s “internal agency”.
PROBLEM
The organization had several existing, content-heavy department websites with complex taxonomies and built on various different platforms. As the sole web producer also responsible for managing content, Lauren was already challenged with maintaining and optimizing the existing websites. SJHC had licensed an enterprise CMS platform from Ektron to create additional department websites, however each of these department websites was treated as a separate, individual project. New projects were exceeding budgets, missing deadlines, and the workload of the web production team would continue to increase.
Lauren met with stakeholders to gain an understanding their business goals and requirements. She determined the bottleneck was the existing production process. There was too much time spent in planning phase with an infinite number of possibilities for each project.
SOLUTION
As project sponsor, Lauren proposed and led production of single, new enterprise website to unify all departments and improve the user experience.
Lauren hired Guidance, a local web development firm, to develop custom CMS applications (plugins/modules) and page templates that streamlined content authoring by leveraging the existing Ektron CMS platform. An entire department section (microsite) could be created in just a few hours. She also created a comprehensive CMS training manual to allow non-technical users in each department manage their own content.
In addition, Lauren conducted extensive behavioral research, revamped the entire information architecture, and enhanced content to create a much improved user experience for visitors of the new Saint John’s Health Center website.
Lauren initiated and and led the planning phases of a custom application built on top of an existing backend infrastructure for Kidlandia, an e-tailer specializing in personalized gifts for kids. The application included modular admin tools that enabled a non-technical team member the ability to add and edit content.
The modules could also be plugged in and re-used throughout the site. The application’s tools provided the flexibility to market a variety of branded merchandise and products, and offer promotions more effectively.
In 2006 HLM Apparel acquired SizeAppeal.com, a retail apparel e-commerce store. The site had multiple issues ranging from no inventory tracking to poor customer service, including a backend that had not been improved since its launch in 2000. HLM Apparel needed a low cost solution that solved a number of issues while maintaining the flexibility to add functionality over time.
By selecting the out of the box e-commerce platform AspDotNetStorefront and hiring multiple third parties, I managed the entire shopping cart migration, redesign and re-launch of SizeAppeal.com. In addition, I successfully saved the company $40,000 in development costs.
