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CompuSports
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I've worked with many other vendors. But you are the best that is out there.
Nick Interdonato, Owner of Compusports
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Company Profile
CompuSports, a software publisher specializing in applications for sports coaches, envisioned a network of sites to compliment and extend their primary business initiative and needed a web developer who could bring their vision to reality.
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Solutions & Benefits
CompuSports first met with Addison in March of 2002. In addition to it’s corporate site, CompuSports.com, the company had recently launched a separate initiative, an online directory of educational web sites geared towards football coaches. The directory site provided a valuable free resource to coaches, but more importantly it attracted CompuSports’ target market and provided a rich advertising opportunity for the company’s software products.
Football Coaching directory had been built by an independent consultant and was storing data in a ‘desktop’ relational database. The site had grown immensely popular among the coaching community and was experiencing down-time because the back-end technology was not strong enough to handle the amount of simultaneous visitors querying the database. We immediately recommended transitioning the system to an enterprise database platform and moving the site to Addison’s servers. In the process of upgrading the system, we improved the category structure, user interface, and search abilities of the site. We also integrated new features at the company’s request, including a news/editorials system, FAQ system, and email marketing system, all feeding from a single database and managed directly by CompuSports’ staff.
Throughout development, we remained focused on delivering optimized, fast-loading pages and streamlining a visitor’s path from the home page to the information they wanted. CompuSports was so pleased with the new version of the directory that they asked us to leverage the technology into a brand new online directory covering a range of sports.
Both sites pull information from the same database, allowing CompuSports to add new web site links, editorials, and frequently asked questions to both directories at the same time. In addition, we integrated our visitor tracking program, Addison Tracker, into both sites, allowing the owner to monitor and compare traffic on each site, from a single backend interface.
A short time later, CompuSports approached Addison with plans for a bold new business initiative: an online store dedicated to eBooks and software tools for coaches. CompuSports had sold it’s software products online for years, but this newly proposed site would be much more than a simple online shopping cart. The goal was to create an online marketplace where coaching related software developers, authors, and publishers could sell their software, multimedia training tools, books, and articles... and all of these products would be instantly downloadable. Our consultants worked with CompuSports to outline the abilities and limitations of online content delivery and fine-tune the business requirements of the proposed system. We discussed in detail what type of individual would use this site and designed a graphic motif to appeal to that market segment. Once all the specifications were agreed upon, our development team began building the new system from the ground up.
In the Fall of 2002, CompuSportsMedia.com was launched. From the perspective of an online customer, the site is a standard online store which accepts payments (with real-time authorization) and allows the customer to instantly download the eBook or software they have purchased. Behind the scenes are a number of backend areas with different levels of control over the content of the store:
The first area allows approved authors to login and manage eBooks (or software titles) that they have created and wish to offer for sale. Authors can upload new documents from this area and, at their request, the system will automatically convert the files to a web-deliverable format. Product details include a number of optional features such as attaching a free sample or demo file to a product or specifying install instructions which are emailed to a buyer upon purchase. From this area, authors can also review all sales of their products and send targeted email blasts to customers who have purchased from them in the past.
The second area is for ‘publishers’, defined by the system as those who manage one or more authors. In this area, publishers can add or remove from the list of authors they manage and can upload new products or edit existing products details for any of their authors. They can also send targeted email blasts to their author’s online customers and view detailed reports which compare sales numbers and overall revenue between products or between authors.
The third area is for ‘affiliates’, other web sites which direct customers to CompuSportsMedia.com and receive commission on each sale resulting from their referral. Similar to the author and publisher areas, this area allows an affiliate to view all of the past sales they had a hand in and send targeted emails to customers who made these sales.
The final backend area provides full site management control and is accessible only by CompuSports staff. The site management area allows staff to add new authors, publishers, and affiliates, upload new products on behalf of an author, pull products out of stock, or set specific products as ‘featured’ which pushes them to the front of the site. This area also notifies staff of new products and prompts them to approve each one: no product added by an author or publisher appears in the store until it has been approved by CompuSports. CompuSports can also create online coupons for special promotions, publish frequently asked questions, articles, and editorials, and send targeted emails to customers based on information they have provided about themselves (for example, ‘send to all high school football coaches from Florida’). And, of course, the site management area allows Compusports staff to review recent orders, monitor credit card transaction details, and generate various sales reports to analyze online revenue over any period of time.
Since it’s launch, CompuSportsMedia.com has processed a steady flow of orders, including many purchases of CompuSports own software. But even more important than this new revenue stream, the success of the site has expanded and strengthened CompuSports’ relationships with business partners and individual authorities in the coaching community, and has established the company as a driving force in their industry.
Now that the company had expanded it’s online business model into several diverse initiatives, CompuSports wanted a single, central location from which they could support all of their customer and partner relationships. The primary functions of this new site would be to offer technical assistance to customers, to explain the partner programs available to authors, vendors, and affiliates, and to train existing partners over the web.
Addison worked with CompuSports to plan the site map and layout of the proposed site, CompusportsNetwork.com. We designed and developed a private, secure support area where existing customers can register their software, download product updates, patches, or user manuals, and search an extensive knowledge-base of common technical issues. Customers can also sign up to be automatically notified by email of new products or product updates and can chat online with CompuSports support staff during normal business hours, using third party chat software built into the site. In addition to this chat feature, CompuSports wanted to be able to schedule online training sessions with new business partners. Addison educated CompuSports’ management on web conferencing technology, discussed exactly what features they needed, and then recommended a third-party program which we integrated into the site.
Conclusion
CompuSports manages all of the HTML content on their sites themselves, but depends on Addison for all interactive features and database programming. Over the years, we have added new features to virtually all of CompuSport’s sites, at the company’s request. In 2004, we added a cross-selling ‘related products’ feature to CompuSportsMedia.com and added several enhancements to the back-end inventory management tools. Next we launched a brand new directory site, and added scheduled sports camps and coaching clinics to the structure of all three online directories. We also built a banner ad system into all three sites which allows CompuSports to sell advertising targeted to individual directory categories.
CompusSports continues to find Addison as a valued resource for efficient and effective programming, web development, DNS and Disaster Recovery consulting.
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