ODA Case Study
ODA Uses Hot Banana's Web CMS to Cut Development Time and Build Better Web Sites
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ODA ( www.odasf.com ), one of San Francisco’s hottest Web development and branding agencies, has a reputation for bringing its clients’ brands to life by infusing them with a provocative, distinct and compelling voice. But before using Lyris’ Hot Banana, an award-winning Web content management system (Web CMS), breathing life into brand Web sites was a laborious, manual process that was further complicated by each client having a unique development environment.“We developed shortcuts and techniques that enabled us to make manual coding more efficient, but that really didn’t solve the underlying problem,” said Chris Black, technology director at ODA. “The number of development languages in use and the diverse requirements from various hosting services was making it increasingly difficult for us to meet our clients’ requirements in an efficient and profitable manner. And frankly, all this unnecessary work was cutting into my weekend snowboarding activities.”
So ODA conducted a search of available content management solutions and quickly determined that Lyris’ Hot Banana fit the bill. Shortly thereafter, InSound Medical ( www.insoundmedical.com ), a developer and manufacturer of next-generation hearing devices, asked ODA to re-brand the company and re-launch its corporate and consumer Web sites. Black and his team knew that they could meet the technical, budgetary, and timeline requirements using Hot Banana’s Web CMS.
“After partnering with Lyris’ Hot Banana, we knew we could provide a robust Web CMS hosting package to InSound Medical – and to all our clients – while simultaneously delivering a stable and open development platform with limitless capabilities,” said Black.
The Challenge
InSound Medical hired ODA in June 2007 to re-brand and re-launch its public-facing Web sites: www.lyrichearing.com and www.insoundmedical.com . A number of factors, however, complicated the project:
- InSound wanted a “Physician Locator” – a feature that helped consumers find doctors who offered the company’s products. Physician Locator also had to maintain a growing list of physicians via Web-based CSV data upload, and to manage this data through an administrative interface on the back end.
- InSound wanted a “Lifestyle Checklist” that could function as a screening and demographics tool that directed users to the Physician Locator if they met appropriate lifestyle requirements.
- InSound wanted to track how consumers were finding the Physician Locator and to generate reports based on users’ search results.
- InSound needed the Web sites to be integrated with online and offline marketing campaigns via analytics and landing pages.
The Solution
Using Hot Banana, Black and his team defined a development path and began creating the sites. The consumer site was built first, followed by the corporate site, and both were integrated into the same Hot Banana administration console.
Black’s team leveraged Hot Banana’s open development architecture to quickly create the Physician Locator and Lifestyle Checklist functionalities. Hot Banana’s built-in analytics support also enabled ODA to integrate seamlessly with third party online marketing tools including Google Analytics and AdWords.
“Smooth. That’s the word I’d use to sum up our experience with Hot Banana on this project,” Black said. “Even the most complex features we designed worked after a few refinements. The Hot Banana API really sped things up.”
The Results
Because ODA is a small branding agency, resources are at a premium. Lyris’ Hot Banana application also helped here, flattening the development path and allowing programmers to work in a familiar environment – without any surprises or unexpected glitches.
“Hot Banana has changed our Web development process, and has decreased the dreaded 'gray areas' in our development timelines,” Black said. “And its robust functionality allowed quick development of fairly complicated custom modules. These efficiencies have enabled us to pursue other activities that grow our business.”
Instead of spending time fixing bugs, the development team is now participating more in technical sales calls and investing additional resources in internal R&D. And this new freedom has allowed the company to start developing a new revenue-generating service – data-driven Flex-enabled interfaces backed by Lyris’ Hot Banana application. This will allow the company to provide all appropriate clients seeking Flash-based Web sites with dynamic, cutting-edge Web properties using a standardized back end.
Black and other members of the executive team are also using their newfound free time to go snowboarding.
As for InSound, their Web sites were rolled out on time – as promised – and without any glitches.
