Digital Media Specialists

The end client is one of the three best-selling blended whiskies in Scotland.

Requirement

To develop a Facebook application to allow users to vote for their favourite bars initially in Greece and Russia.

Key functional elements included:

• Developing a Facebook application that integrated with Google maps to allow users to add a bar in their market
• Allowing users to upload photographs against a bar and vote for it to be the best bar in their market
• Developing the solution so that it would work in non-Roman fonts and could easily be localised for future market roll-outs

Technical Solution

The application was built in PHP, MS SQL 2005 (to replicate the client’s hosting environment) and JavaScript and Flash elements for the front end and with integration with Google Maps via its API.

The application was integrated with Facebook allow users to register via their profile and have all other data including voting stored in the application’s database.

Additional functionality included developing all application content to delivered via XML to make further market roll-outs quick to deploy.

Project Mechanics

The project ran for two months from initial planning to launch. Some key stages of the project included:

• Working in a semi-Agile project approach to meet the end client’s launch timetable for the first version of the application
• Developing the application architecture to allow it to function as a standalone application for individual markets but with a centralised administration backend accessible from the web.
• On-going application maintenance and support

Conclusion

Despite having a relatively short project timeline we were able to work in a collaborative fashion with the client defining functionality as the development progressed and still being able to deliver on time and within budget.

The application was extremely successful in its launch markets and the end client is now actively planning to roll it out to other global territories that they are present in.