Tolomatic, a manufacturer of pneumatic and electric actuators and power transmission products found itself with an antiquated, unmanageable website with thousands of pages of information that made it difficult to navigate and find products leading to confusion and reduced user engagement.
Risdall recommended an approach that would leverage Tolomatic’s creation of detailed engineering data in print format, without adding undue cost, complexity, or resource burden associated with re-creating complex tables, graphs, and drawings. The solution would need to support the user’s need to find products by characteristics specific to their implementation, such as drive type, stroke length, thrust, and industry spec. It would also need to support Tolomatic’s robust inbound marketing program and growing global presence.
Risdall devised a “publish once, distribute many” workflow, capturing important metadata information during document upload while repurposing the source documents as web deliverables. A faceted search engine was created to allow users to explore product lines, then fine-tune their search by multiple specifications. The administrative interface was built upon a single page application (SPA) framework designed to support the data-heavy specification’s management without overly burdening the server with large requests and responses associated with traditional web forms. The solution was built on top of the .NET based Evoq content management system, allowing Risdall to focus on delivering custom requirements, rather than standard features found in best of breed CMS platforms.
The redesigned website made an immediate impact on users and critics alike, earning the Web Marketing Association’s Manufacturing Standard of Excellence award in 2016 and 2017. The product admin is able to search, filter, and display hundreds of records in fractions of a second due to its unique architecture and use of modern browser technology like local storage, increasing the efficiency of administering thousands of interrelated records. A variety of new features have been added since launch including a multi-lingual release.
