Ricoh launches web app to match the right software with the
customer's need

Ricoh Americas Corp. (a leader in office automation equipment and document software solutions) wanted to make it easier for customers to know which components of a new software suite would meet their needs. This is a common challenge faced by companies marketing technology products. The answer of what to buy can depend a lot on what infrastructure the customer has, their intended application, number of users, specs, etc. The more multi-faceted a product is, the more difficulty customers have deciding if it fits and how well. To address this, Presentek worked with Ricoh to develop a web-based configurator for a new enterprise software product - the GlobalScan Workflow Suite. Within a simple interface, customers answer questions about their situation and uses of the product. They are then presented with a recommended configuration in just a few clicks.

Under the hood, the application was developed using PHP, MySQL, the Adobe Flex 3 framework and ActionScript 3.0. This combination of technologies allowed us to design a "front-end" user-experience that is dynamic, fluid, and easy to interact with, all while giving us the capability to handle the complex logic and calculations needed to match the user with their recommended solutions. Once we had completed development on the web-based application, we adapted it into a desktop application running on Adobe AIR. Ricoh sales people may download and install the application directly to their laptops just like any other desktop software. This gives them the ability to configure solutions on-the-fly, in any location -- even if they are disconnected from the Internet.

  Click here for the full case study with sample screens
  Click here to see the configurator

It's all about the customer's needs
Do you have a portfolio of multiple products or solutions? Do customers need help understanding how your products match up to various applications? Is it confusing which accessories, extensions or add-ons are needed? If so, consider offering your customers an alternative to slogging through pages of product info. with a web application customized to your product, solution or service. Most companies have no idea how many times visitors simply close the browser. Draw them in with questions that ask what THEY need, what THEY want to accomplish and match your offering to those needs using a simple web application.

Free Application Assessment

Send us a url with info. on your product, solution or service along with any comments. We'll review and let you know if it lends itself to using a product configurator or web application, and if so how it could work.

Oh...and if you want to know how many times people close the browser from your product pages, we can help with that too.

What impact will Google Chrome, IE8 and other next generation browsers have on your site?

With the advent of new and updated browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox 3, Opera 9, Apple Safari 3 for Windows/Mac, and the upcoming Internet Explorer 8, comes a whole new set of issues pertaining to browser compatibility and standards compliance. Typically, the latest browsers will have updated rendering engines that will adhere more closely to the specification written by the W3C, and will display your web pages accordingly. This is great for those browsers that don't usually require any CSS "hacks" to force them to display correctly. However, problems might arise with some browsers if the hacks that were previously developed are no longer needed in the new browser version. This might cause your site to display incorrectly using a newer browser.

For example, IE8 is the most standards-compliant browser that Microsoft has ever released. But if a site was built when only IE6 and 7 were on the market, there would likely have been a number of CSS hacks that would have been utilized to make those versions of IE display a page as intended. Now that IE8 doesn't need a lot of those hacks, it will still see them, thus rendering the site improperly (and sometimes breaking a page completely -- we've seen this already). IE8 has a Compatibility Mode button that tries to make things look right, but experience has shown you simply can't hope for the best and rely on every user clicking the button.

Furthermore, there are problems that IE8 has introduced that require entirely new hacks, and problems that have stubbornly remained from past versions. The bottom line is that if your site looks wrong, visitors will assume it's you. It is critical to assess the state of your site, test it and optimize the code where needed. Compatibility with next generation browsers is important and shouldn't be ignored since the impact grows every day as users across the world upgrade their systems with the new browsers.

Free Browser Compatibility Review (for recipients of this newsletter)

We have the expertise to quickly review your sites and/or applications to see how the new browser releases might affect you. Send us your url and we will assess the page or application. If we find any issues we'll note those and send you a screen cap or other description so you can see the issue.

Good clean code - the case for web standards and CSS best practices

We code our CSS and HTML pages using web-standards. This means that we develop the code to be compliant to the specifications as set by the W3C, resulting in a separation of the presentation of the page layout (or styling/how the page looks) from the structure (the code defining elements such as paragraphs, headers, content, etc.).

Doing it this way has many benefits:

• 1. Cross-browser (and user-agent) compatibility - because the code is developed according to a standard that all modern browsers (ones written in the past 5 years or so) and user-agents recognize, there is no special coding needed (e.g. a version of the site in IE vs. a version for Firefox/Safari; or creating scripts to force a browser to render a page in a certain way). Developing special code in the past would effectively double both development and maintenance time.
• 2. SEO - search engine spiders are simply user-agents that only look at the structure of the code, and the content, not how the page displays. By removing the styling from that code structure, the spiders can easily get at the content of the page without having to sift through information it doesn't need. Additionally, if a page is structured properly (with headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.), the search engines generally will rank the page/site higher.
• 3. Accessibility - users with disabilities use screen-readers and other types of devices and software that allow them to interact with the web. Developing with standards-compliant code makes it so that those other user-agents will be able to "read" the content of the site without getting confused by information they can't use (similar to search engine spiders). It also allows those users with limited mobility to interact with the site. Additionally, in order to validate, the code must contain certain elements and attributes that those special user-agents can use to more effectively communicate with the user. All of this allows you to market to the entire population without leaving anyone out simply because they can't use a normal web browser.
• 4. Ease of Maintenance - because the code structure is separated from the styling/layout, maintaining content, changing site colors, images, behaviors, etc. are all much easier because the code is human-readable and as a developer, you don't have to weed through and clean up unnecessary code.
• 5. Load-time and Bandwidth - standards-compliant code is naturally "un-bloated" in that it doesn't contain the unnecessary code needed in traditional sites to affect how the page displays. This results in smaller file sizes which results in smaller footprints on the server, fewer resources needed to serve the page, reduced bandwidth needed to view a page (both for the user and for the server), and a reduced load-time for the user. When converting a site to standards-compliant code, we have seen reductions of up to 1/3 of the original size of an html file while keeping all the content and look and feel the same.
• 6. Device-interoperability (phones, PDAs, projection screens, etc.) - again, since the code structure is separated from the layout and styling, the site can be adapted to display on various device-types without having to rewrite the actual code. We would simply create new stylesheets for those particular devices.

Free Validation Test and Code Review (for recipients of this newsletter)

Send us your url and we will run a validation test on the page. In addition we'll inspect the code and advise you of our findings and let you know if any of the above benefit areas could be significantly improved by using standards-compliant code.

More cool capabilities you can add to your site

• * PDF this page
• * Member-only areas
• * RSS feeds
• * Virtual demos
• * Forums, blogs, discussion boards
• * Smart pages that "know" which related content to display
• * Personalized pages that change based on your login
• * Social networking, collaboration

Please contact us to discuss any of these.