Bullseye worked with the natural health brand to implement Sitecore CMS software and Online Marketing Suite (OMS) solutions to build a digital platform that connects more personally with its customers. The new website is personalised to each individual who joins, and is designed to inspire, inform and educate Australians to achieve better health.

“We were thoroughly impressed with how Blackmores and Bullseye have built a website with Sitecore’s technology that has engaged their audiences by offering dynamic content and Enterprise 2.0 features and functionality,” said Kim Elsass, Chief Information Officer, Sitecore. “By creating such a strong and attractive community, Blackmores has become one of the top websites in Australia and New Zealand. We are proud to recognise and congratulate them.”

According to Jason Davey, Managing Director at Bullseye, “Consumers have little patience for irrelevant content, and everyone’s health and fitness outlook and experience is different. Using the intuitive features of leading edge technology, we have built a website for Blackmores that offers a totally personalised experience. It’s slick, clever and designed entirely to delight each individual visitor.”

Sitecore’s Site of the Year contest recognises customers who have leveraged Sitecore’s technology to develop the most outstanding websites. The Sitecore judges considered creativity, integration with rich data sources and applications, overall user experience and the ability to educate, inform and motivate an action.

The MVP program recognises exceptional technical community leaders who encourage free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real-world Web CMS expertise. For 2009, twelve individuals from around the world were selected to be members of the program and honored with a Sitecore Most Valuable (MVP) Award. We’re particularly chuffed that Jason was the only Aussie selcted to join the elite group, including: Guillaume Buat-Ménard/Aqueduct, Sebastian Winslow/Codehouse, Stefan van Dockum/Colours, Kern Herskind Hansen/Consultant, Vincent van Middendorp/Evident Interactive, Sean Kearney/Hedgehog Development, Andreas Bergström/Metamatrix, Jens Mikkelsen/Pentia, Matt Hovany/The Revere Group, Aren Cambre/Southern Methodist University and Gabriel Boys/Velir and, of course, Jason Davey/Bullseye,

Congratulations Jason!

Project objectives

1. Redesign the BigPond Kids website in a more energetic and engaging way
2. Showcase other BigPond content such as games, music, movies, TV, mobile and sport
3. Provide an experience that makes kids return again and again
4. Create an environment where 3rd party content can be integrated seamlessly

Bullseye’s approach and solution

INTERACTIVE
Using elements from video game interfaces

ENGAGING
Create an experience kids will continue to use

MODULAR
Our design is both interesting and easy to publish

FLEXIBILE
Allows customisation (for kids and advertisers) further down the track

Results

Following the BigPond Kids relaunch in April, unique visitors had grown by 264% compared to March. Three months on, the cumulative growth in unique visitors is  394%.

BigPond asked what kids thought of the new site.  Here were some of the responses.

‘This site is the best most awesome site I have ever gone on you can go on comps sports and awesome games!!!!!!! MADDEST WEBSITE EVER!!!!’

‘The new BigPond kid’s website is fantastic, it’s way cooler than the previous website. This is more interactive and has got a nice look to it.’

‘This site is awesome – just discovered it and have told my friends about it also. Can’t wait to get home everyday to see what’s new.’

BigPond Kids home page

http://www.touchey.com/blog/2009/3/6/2009-logo-trends.html

And another showing beautifully illustrated & grungy websites…these sites look fantastic but there is debate about how user friendly they are. Packed with bright colours, users might find it difficult to pinpoint where they need to go and the price of beauty is often a lengthy site load time. But they still look damn good! Make up your own mind at:

http://www.touchey.com/blog/2009/3/8/30-beautifully-illustrated-grungy-websites.html

Touchey is a good place to stop off for when looking at current design trends across the world.

What is your most secret wish? To save the world, become a famous writer or to have another wish? It’s time to make wishes come true. Here is an award winning flash experience site with games and special features created by 2Fresh.

Beautifully crafted fullscreen goodness. Lots of added extras and surprises to keep the user engaged.  A nice use of After Effects for button rollovers makes the experience just that extra bit touchy feely!  Even though this site is rich in content it seems to function relatively smoothly.  However my machine is half decent, so I wouldn’t mind finding out how it performs on something with less grunt… or even a Mac.

Visit the site here: http://www.o2vanoce.cz/eng

Me likes!

With over 1.88 million SMBs in Australia, technology can be used as a competitive differentiator for SMBs competing in the global economy, and the right technology is key to survival. Having worked with SMBs extensively in the past, I know firsthand that SMBs have the greatest technology needs, but are often restricted by limited budgets and a lack of access to IT know-how.  This is a fantastic initiative by Dell that provides a useful resource to help Australian SMBs make the right technology purchase for their business.

I am delighted to be part of this initiative as the IT Expert. Keep an eye out for the monthly articles as they are both educational and informative.

Website:
www.dell.com.au/sb360

First Articles:
Does Social Networking pose a threat to your business?
Boost your business with online technologies

Bio: Pedro da Palma Rosa

To promote the Sydney Running Festival, Blackmores asked Bullseye to design a site that helped runners get the best out of their experience on race day.

We came up with various tools that helped runners achieve their best no matter what their level of fitness. There were training tips, recommended runs, split calculators, even a personalised training program that catered for everyone, from first timers to the more experienced athlete. The training program was custom built for an individuals level of fitness. A number of ‘Challenges’ were introduced during the 8 week lead up to the run, including training sessions and organising running groups to meet up. You could even go round the whole course without leaving your armchair with a web cam which was condensed into a 5 minute timeline: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwHMbOjh_I
This video brought the experience and flavour of the event to life online way before the big day.

Over 7,000 ‘Challenges’ were taken over the 8 week training program: The site was so successful after the event that we continued the ‘Challenge’ and re-tailored the training program to incorporate not just runs but walks and bike rides. Individuals can track and view the best walks or runs at a glance within Google maps. This fitted perfectly with the brand strategy to become part of the bigger ‘B Your Best’ movement within Blackmores set of sites.

The site is specifically targeted at an individuals level of fitness and a particular stage of life. From weight to pregnancy we developed interactive tools to help you ‘B your best’ this jump page was aimed at all Australians and was deliberately designed to become a rallying call for everyone to take the ‘challenge’ and strive to be fitter.

Another way we promoted the brand value of ‘Be your best’ for Blackmores was to keeep people motivated in preparing for the event and to continue to engage with them once they completed the run. Runners who participated in the Running Festival were able to see themselves cross the finish line by entering their bib number or name. They could also forward their very own ‘moment of glory’ to family and friends.
http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/  We also suggested people share their experience by tagging their pictures with ‘BSRF08’ which was then streamed onto the official Blackmore’s site for all to share in true Web 2.0 fashion. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/BSRF08/show/

Kevin Ferry our creative Director summed the whole event up by saying: ‘It’s amazing the web, yes I know we all talk about the fancy websites, cool interfaces, and slick animation etc. but for me nothing beats it when real people from real communities come together and contribute via the web; that’s what happened last week at the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival, one of the best.”’ Visit the site

Real Estate matching is a challenge that most of us have been through at least once, and one that real estate agents solve with an exchange of location information for customer needs parameters such as property requirements and price.

The web has given rise to a wealth of property information, and now represents a major resource for prospective buyers.  Not surprisingly, the industry boasts some of the best examples of how the internet is changing our shopping behaviour.  Examples such as Zillow,  Trulia and Realestate.com.au are continuing evolving the service of matching customer real estate needs against their pool of properties.

Hoodeo is a new online business that launched today and attempts to apply a neighbourhood filter to the property selection process.  After filling in about 10 questions (on 3 pages), you get this page.

The chart (and survey questions) graph the results according to Lifestyle, Property and Price.

I think Hoodeo should have enhanced the engagement of the survey by using images, and I believe the “Lifestyle” parameter should be sub-divided into a selection of lifestyle categories.

The site doesn’t include social features to allow customers to rate, review, share and have conversations about the neighbourhood variables.

Perspective: Whilst digital allows websites to provide functionality not offered in other communication channels, the "experience" is what separates good sites from great ones, and what results in word of mouth spread of the features offered.