Opportunity

Western Office Interiors already had an enviable reputation as an industry leader in furniture dealership, and a provider of customized up-market furniture solutions to diverse businesses. However the business needed an online presence to help capitalize on their strong market position and goodwill, which the company had built from successfully catering to the needs of clients for almost 100 years. To ensure that its business kept pace with the expectations of contemporary clientele, the company approached PLAVEB with a specific set of requirements and needs.

The client wanted a website that was a reflection of its business philosophy, and commitment to providing only the most high-end furniture solutions. The brief was clear and to the point - The website needed to provide prospective clients with an interactive environment, delivering a 360° view of what furniture solutions from Western Office Interiors would look like, shown with different options of ambient lighting.

The overall focus of the website was to provide stunning visual imagery, that perfectly captured the essence of its product and service offerings.

Challenges

  • Ensuring consistent homepage quality across diverse screen resolutions, with respect to image clarity, sharpness and positioning.
  • Projecting graphics in a way that gave a 360° effect, made possible with the integration of a slider for left to right views.
  • Enabling three level category management in Flash.
  • Designing a high performance Flash website, by fetching the data for category, sub-category, and projects pages when the homepage loads; ensuring that no requests are sent to the web server when the category, sub-category, and projects pages load.
  • Loading time optimization with high resolution background images, by loading the interior model first, and then segmenting the loading process of background images.
  • File Size Optimization.
  • Image Optimization, to ensure there is no difference in the resolution of thumbnail images and their enlarged versions.
  • Integration of Google Maps API.
  • Incorporation of Ambient Control, so that the background lights effect of the Flash design changes automatically, to reflect the change in ambient lighting; enabling visitors to see this change, by moving the ambient control.
  • Integrating a 'Lighting On/Off' feature, to highlight a specific section of the furnishings displayed on the home page.
  • Integrating a 'Night View/Day View' lighting effect feature, to provide a day and night views pertinent to the location.
  • Flash Compatible HTML Conversion.

Execution

PLAVEB designed and developed a website founded on Flash, with client specified customization, and a focus on stunning, high resolution visuals. We began by initiating a thorough process of requirement gathering and analysis, which helped our team gain an in-depth understanding of project requirements. We identified the various complexities of the project, and initiated the project design only after zeroing in on the perfect solutions-driven approach to development. The project execution was founded on the cornerstones of exemplary coordination, quality focus, stringent adherence to client requirements, and thorough testing.

Result

We seamlessly executed the client requirements, to make the website a vital component of the company’s promotional efforts. Our design team met all of the challenges head-on, to offer a highly intuitive website that is a virtual extension of the client’s brand, value, and business philosophy. We successfully addressed the need to employ three different location backdrops, individual lighting triggers, and an expansive landscape perspective. All of these features were brought together seamlessly, though a stylish user interface.

Technical Details

PLAVEB utilized a collection of advanced technologies for designing the website, including Flash, ActionScript 3, and Google Map API. The website was developed in .NET Framework 3.5, runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database, and is hosted on Windows Server 2008 with Microsoft IIS 7. PLAVEB also implemented a built-in Error Notification System that sends error messages directly to the developer, without needing to inform end-users.