Brief
Business Events - who organise the Sydney Business Awards on behalf of the City of Sydney Council - sought to refresh the 2008 website. They selected a third-party creative company, Bapple, for the design and contracted Raw Ideas to implement the design and incorporate a Content Management System (CMS) to control the many stages of the Awards Campaign.
Solution
An enterprise Content Management System, eZ Publish, was selected which enabled Raw Ideas to facilitate the site’s core functionality. An Awards System was built to handle voting, nominations and the purchasing of tickets.
Additionally, PayPal and credit card clearing facilities were implemented to facilitate ticket sales. The site was also integrated with an SMS gateway, to allow the public to vote by SMS.
The Sydney Business Awards website has the following key features:
- CMS management of the Awards’ five-phase life.
- Homepage promotion boxes & multi-tier sponsor rotator.
- Dynamically configurable Award Categories and Business types.
- Provision for nomination and registration of businesses.
- Public voting via the web and SMS.
- Top 10 tracker for each category.
- Retail system to sell the Award Night tickets via the website.
- Image gallery management.
- Custom Reports to enable Business Events’ management of the awards campaign.
The website was well received, with positive feedback from both the City of Sydney Council and the public, and has assisted Business Events in running two successful award campaigns.
Enhancements
As part of the 2010 Sydney Business Awards campaign, the client sought to attract a mobile market. The idea was to help businesses promote and receive votes by suggesting to their in-store customers that they use their mobile to cast their vote on the spot.
A mobile website was designed and developed by Raw Ideas to meet the targeted demographic: BlackBerry 9000 series+ and iPhones providing the Sydney public with three voting avenues for their favourite businesses: website, mobile website and SMS.