EPSON: A New Look For A Great Website

Company Details

Epson is a Japanese technology company and one of the largest manufacturers of computer printers and imaging-related equipment. The company has a corporate history dating back to 1942. However, the breakthrough came with the launch of EP-101 (Electronic Printer) in 1968 and the foundation of the Epson brand in 1975. There are around one hundred professionals working in Epson Europe B.V., and over a thousand high quality specialists in the representative offices across Russia and other CIS countries. The Epson representative offices play a very important role in achieving the company's marketing goals by distributing the company's products, providing its clients and partners with the latest product information and technical support within the region.

Project Goals

Articul Media was the developer of this project. Articul specializes in websites and web project development including e-stores and e-commerce portals, online catalogs, multimedia projects and everything that is connected with new digital communication technologies, as well as consulting services for companies active in the financial sector of economy seeking new internet solutions to improve their business. Articul Media has successfully designed and brought to life over 500 web projects for well-known brands and large corporations. The company received more than 20 international awards and is included in Russia's top 10 most successful Interactive Agencies. Articul Media is also one of the Bitrix' leading partners.

The main tasks were to re-design and update website content which had been previously created for Epson, and also make the website technologically more advanced. In re-designing the website, it was crucial to comply with and optimize the business processes of the company, and to make them more efficient from the point of view of marketing strategies. Re-thinking the website design and navigation was amongst the first things Articul Media had to do to get started with the Epson vision of its new web project. The plan of reconstructing and renewing the website included the following crucial tasks:

• Create a new design concept for the website, including layout and color scheme;
• Re-arrange the content structure in a more user-friendly way;
• Optimize the way a user navigates through the web pages;
• Make the information search as simple and easy as possible;
• Improve access to information using a single-click concept;
• Make the website more interactive and informative;
• Make some of the company's marketing tools and business processes available online.

A better navigation was the second key element of the project. The website must have a user-friendly navigation that should gradually give information about the company's products and services and assist them in choosing and buying the right product. This should facilitate the Epson clients in their purchase attempts made online.

The Solution

The new Epson website has been made of two parts: a showcase website containing descriptions of products and services and an intranet portal for internal use of the company's employees and dealers. This project has been built using Bitrix Site Manager: Premium Edition which incorporates an advanced content management system (CMS) that is used in all Bitrix Site Manager editions and superior Enterprise 2.0 technologies present in Bitrix Intranet Portal, an enterprise content management system (ECM).

Bitrix Site Manager: Premium Edition enables users to instantly edit any content present on their website, easily create multi-level product catalogs, and interact with website visitors using the latest social networking technology. Bitrix Site Manager CMS makes it possible to optimize work of several independent departments or persons who may simultaneously generate or modify content on the website (for example, the company's employees, its dealers and partners will be able to see all changes made in common databases with product lists and prices). It also allows creation of corporate standards by implementing a unified system of document approval, request processing, etc.

Bitrix Site Manager: Premium Edition was used to form an intranet portal and an online product showcase complying with all the requirements set by the corporate identity policy. Not only does it help Epson clients and partners find any kind of information related to Epson products, but also makes it possible to update the content in a convenient Web2.0 way – right in the front-end of the website.Project technical details:

• 2 Gb of random-access memory (RAM);
• Intel Xeon 5120 @ 1.86 GHz, 2 dual-core processors;
• HDD RAID 1, SAS 140 Gb, split into 2 partitions (40/97);
• OS Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition SP 2;
• DBMS MS SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition SP3;
• Windows IIS 6.0 web server.

"Besides optimizing the internal processes of Epson corporation with the help of a website, we've been trying to make the website user-friendly and with simple navigation. That was one of the main requirements set out for us by Epson Europe B.V., and we did our best to make browsing through the new website pages as comfortable as possible. You can search for product information by different methods, depending what you need it for: your home, office or for a specific branch of business." - Natalia Logunova, Articul Media Senior Project Manager.

The Epson new website has changed its design and has improved its usability. The new look of the Epson website and the visual concept of the brand itself created by Articul Media now reflects the idea of a company holding the leading position in the electronics market. When re-designing the website, Articul Media fulfilled the idea set inside the Epson's corporate slogan - "EPSON: Exceed your vision". The new look has been achieved by both changing the design and rearranging the content:

• The information on the website is now presented interactively;
• A more efficient advertisement management and marketing campaign analytics is now being used;
• A simpler and more convenient access to the information presented on the website is now available;
• A single-mouse-click concept to navigate to different catalog categories is realized for the new website.

Bitrix Site Manager: Premium Edition has made it possible to make the web site fully interactive giving its visitors outstanding browsing experience throughout the Epson's new information resource:

• User-friendly product search that divides products into several groups;
• Point-of-sale search linked to the integrated dealers database;
• Convenient search of Epson ink, supplies and consumables;
• Search options also available from pages containing product models.

Business processes optimization that has been successfully achieved by Articull Media inside the new web project of Epson Europe B.V. The new website has changed the way information is processed and acquired by the company's employees, dealers, partners and customers:

• Database integration for dealers and customers (dealer, price, and product catalog congruency);
• The website data check has been improved and automated (e.g. products models linked to the consumables);
• The website content presentation has been unified and harmonized.

"Developing websites for large corporations, like Epson, is always both a great honor and very serious responsibility for us and for our business partners who use our products and services to develop these kinds of web projects. There is always a great number of requests about the content that sometimes drive web developers just mad because they have to scrutinize each and every minor detail that will be shown online on the website of their customer. However, the Epson project was successfully realized, complying with all requirements set by the Epson Corporation. Articul Media has proven itself to be a responsive and professional web services agency that speaks the client's language and knows how to make their business grow using the latest web technologies." - Dmitry Valyanov, Bitrix, Inc. president.