We don't just build websites. We build successful websites. There is a world of difference.

Case Study: The InfoWest Group for Airbus Industrie
Services Provided: web design and development, database design and integration, site maintenance and hosting

Airbus Industrie, an international aircraft manufacturing consortium, desired a Web site to disseminate information to customers, potential customers, and journalists. They wanted a simple graphic look and feel to their site, with heavy use of corporate colors. Download speed and early-version browser capabilities were of great importance to Airbus Industrie, out of concern for the Internet resources available to their International users-base. Airbus was starting with no presence on the Web and desired to proceed cautiously, focusing on corporate relations, transportation, customer service, marketing and sales support, and quality.

Cyber Services, Inc., working with a Public Relations consultant, developed the Airbus Industrie Web site content through collaborative requirement definition sessions. We began with an outline of 15 pages, containing custom-written descriptions of Airbus, its organization, its customers, and its news. By the end of the first year, through the success of the initial site and extensive education on the part of CSI, the Web site had grown and matured to include more interactive features and over 100 pages, plus many hundred dynamically generated database results pages. This site grew to over 200 pages plus over 500 dynamically generated pages.

A majority of the earlier content of the Airbus site consisted of text with scanned photos. This non-interactive information provides the user with general information about Airbus, its history, accomplishments, customer-base and product line. For this type of content, CSI gave careful consideration to the file size of each block of text and the accompanying photographs. We sized each image file such that it conveyed the desired image without dominating the download time of the page. A trade-off was made between the file size and the value-added by each image.

As the traffic on the Airbus site rose above 20,000 hits per day, the customer gained confidence in the effectiveness of the Web as a medium for reaching its target audience. They became interested in adding more interactive features to the site.

With the volume of press releases beginning to overwhelm the Webmaster, he sought to automate the method by which press releases were added to the Airbus Web site. Using Cold Fusion, CSI developed a Web interface, which allow the Webmaster to enter a press release directly into a password-protected Sybase database for posting on the site. The inherent value of having the database also allowed the user to search the entire database for a topic or date of interest. This time saving feature was highly praised by customers and journalists, alike.

The Airbus Quiz is an example of a site feature replaced every four to six weeks. Participants sometimes competed for prizes, raising the participation level in the Quiz. As the popularity of this feature rose to over 300 participants per month, the Webmaster became convinced that significant time savings would be realized by automating the process. Again, using Cold Fusion and a Sybase database, CSI developed a system to collect name and address information from participants, as well as their responses to the Quiz. As the quiz cycle comes to an end, CSI processed the database, identifying those participants with correct answers to all questions. The prizewinners were then selected using a random number generation method. Also at the end of each Quiz cycle, an email list was generated from the database to notify all participants of the correct answers, to thank them for their participation, and to remind them to visit the site for the new Quiz. All of these processes were automated; taking advantage of the information entered into the database by each individual user.

A photo database was also added through the web-base administrative tool. The webmaster could upload graphic files, create thumbnails, categorize and keyword-tag the photes, and provide titles and captions. The user could then search the database by category or keyword.

Back to Top	Site Map	Request a Quote	Back to Home