Pemaquid recently launched a brand new Web site for Eastern Book Company, a firm located in Westbrook, Maine that provides book acquisition services to libraries worldwide. Librarians place thousands of orders through the site each month.
EBC, run by brothers Dick and Steve Coyne, had decided that the time was right for a makeover. We had a few major objectives.
The Goals
Present a more professional image. Though the EBC Web site was fully functional and getting the job done, Dick Coyne wanted a polished look and feel that would present a first class image to customers (and more importantly, potential customers). The look developed by Pemaquid tied in with a rebranding developed by a local marketing firm and amplified it.
Improve the user experience. EBC strives to provide the best customer service in the book acquisitions industry. Pemaquid provided better views into the status of orders, book claims and especially book searching and sorting.
Content Management. We plugged in a custom version of the Pemaquid Content Manager to allow EBC to self-publish content to the home page and to create booklists and publish news.
Custom RSS feeds. EBC wanted to create custom RSS feeds for their booklists that would allow customers to easily get updates, via a feedreader, of booklist topics of interest to them.
The Technology
Yahoo User Interface. We used “YUI”, as it’s known, to provide AJAX sorting of book search results and shopping cart data. This reduced overhead as fewer calls to the server were needed for customers to navigate recordsets.
Ingres database. EBC maintains millions of book titles in Ingres (the-Open-Source-database-that’s-not-mySQL). We had to tie into that existing system, which we did using PHP.
mySQL database. The Pemaquid Content Manager was built for mySQL; any information not related to book ordering runs through this database.
The Team
In order of appearance…
Jamie Peloquin, Web Designer – Jamie took the EBC brand and created the look and feel.
Jen Ecker, Web Designer (Pixel Surgeon) – Jen was the one primarily responsible for taking Jamie’s design comps and turning them into XHTML and CSS. She added a dash of iconography along the way as well.
Sarah Hines, Web Design/Air Traffic Control – Sarah chipped in with project management and a little HTML coding here and there.
Jeff Norris, Web Developer – Jeff was the one who deciphered Ingres (this was our first Ingres project) and wired in the YUI grids and PHP scripting to talk to it.
Robert Brochu, Graphic Designer – Robert created a few graphics to add the finishing touches to booklistings towards the end of the project.
Rob Landry (Yours Truly), Chief Bottle Washer, Cat Shepherd – I did the business requirements analysis, information architecture, and installed the customized Pemaquid Content Manager and chipped in on the XHTML/CSS, as I usually do. Since it’s my business, I also get to do a lot of project management too (don’t envy me all at once, now).
The Future
The response from EBC customers on the new site has been overwhelmingly positive. I say: Good Start.
We’re currently developing an online marketing plan for Eastern Book which will include Twitter and possibly other social networks where appropriate, and we’re continuing to refine the the user experience based on customer feedback.
