Development Portfolio

Case Study:

Blue Islands Airline Web (2006)

Walkthrough Highlights

Examples of technology created by Paul Tinsley

Apart from feel a sense of panic, what does the sole architect and developer do when asked to build the online presence for an airline?! This was a very challenging problem that I faced at Healthspan and my solution was an ASP.Net web over SQL Server 2000, integrated with a 3rd party booking system and content managed by an MS Access Database Interface.

This presentation will touch upon a few interesting topics to demonstrate my abilities in web development.

First, we take a look at how FAQ searches were used to position adverts.

Then we take a peek under the hood at the advertising system.

Finally, we look at an interactive online survey.

Let’s access the Information section to run an FAQ free text search for Hotels in Guernsey.

Now we select the FAQ Search.

Note the multi-language capability.

Advert dynamically spawned from the inbuilt advertising system.

Let’s search for Guernsey hotels.

The search engine uses Artificial Intelligence to score the relevancy of the keywords against FAQ items in the database.

Notice that context driven adverts have appeared that match the keywords in the search.

Let’s take a look at the top search result.

We can revisit the search if this result is not suitable.

That’s given us a taste of how adverts can be driven by FAQ searches.

Now let’s look under the hood of the Content Management System to see how this can be set up …

If you have budget constraints and few content administrators, MS Access makes an excellent content management tool. Here I am indicating a field where keywords may be associated with the advert, so it may fire should a user search match.

Now let’s head back to the website and see how the adverts are controlled server-side in the code.

We can programmatically set which adverts appear during page loading. We can specify single or lists of adverts, advert categories, how many should render and even use a ranking scheme to push more important adverts to the top of the output list.

We can also set default values for each advert renderer in each User Control. The intent was to eventually content manage these alterations, but I left the company to emigrate before I could complete this stage.

Let’s now have a look at a highly customized online user survey …

Completed sections are automatically hidden from view as they are completed. This improves user “closure”.

Respondents may dynamically configure routes of their choosing into a selection list.

This interactive approach allowed respondents to shape their “dream” routes and precisely detail their route requirements.

Once section 1 was completed, it was hidden so the next section sits comfortably at the top.

A respondent may even detail any desired new routes.

Once section 1 was completed, it was hidden so the next section sits comfortably at the top.

Mistakes can be corrected by highlighting the erroneous route and clicking the Remove button.

A respondent may even detail a desired airline route that doesn’t exist.

Free text sections had character counters so the respondents knew how much space they had left.

Finally, we capture that all important contact information and provide an outlet for anything that we may not have covered.

Should a mandatory data point be neglected, we have a gentle reminder.

Data harvested for this survey was then accessible in reporting and very detailed measurements could be made on the most popular route requests, even routes that had not yet been considered. The interactivity of the survey encouraged respondents to participate, so this was a very versatile tool in connecting marketing with customers.

End of Presentation