Sierra Bravo Partner Program: Online Comparison Tool Project
Adding Online Functionality to Our Partner Agency's Design
Client profile
Sierra Bravo worked with our partner — one of the earliest adopters of Sierra Bravo’s Partner Program — to create a new online tool to for online shoppers to compare products based on the factors that matter most to them. Through our Partner Program, we work with ad and marketing agencies to enhance their creative design concepts with whatever backend programming it takes to make it work on the web.
Our partner, a Minneapolis ad/marketing agency specializing in online communications, was well into advanced discussions on the look and feel of the project with their end-client — a national leader in consumer electronics. Sierra Bravo moved their ideas forward by creating valuable online functionality.
Objectives
Our partner’s client wanted to give online shoppers a fun, simple way to compare choices of consumer electronic products. They wanted online consumers to have the ability to link from specific product pages of their site to the online comparison tool — which would appear in pop-up windows for shoppers to sort, peruse and compare products based on the features that matter most to them.
Our partner agency’s objective was to find a web development company that could handle the backend functionality requirements of the project — someone to supplement their online marketing expertise and design expertise — and someone who could pick up big projects in midstream and turn them around quickly.
Solutions
Sierra Bravo and its partner worked together to create an engaging and intuitive online tool to help shoppers make informed purchases based on price, model, specifications, and features. Along with product comparisons, consumers have access to product reviews and ratings by price-point and brand. Shoppers can drag products to compare them side-by-side, or click for a pop-up window.
Consumers gain product insights in tangible, real-world terms — and based on the differentiating factors most important to them. In deciding what really matters about a product and its purchase, the customer is always right. By filtering out what, to them, is irrelevant or distracting noise, a shopper can easily focus on informing their own preferences and moving toward a purchase.
For shoppers with something already in mind when they go online, their searches can be narrowed according to their specific interests. A filter further allows shoppers to see only basic models, or models from a specific brand or price-point. Shoppers can tailor the look of their screen by choosing either the gallery view or jukebox.
From the online comparison tool, consumers have the ability to print comparison screens and product-specific pages for future offline reference, or to bring to the store if they are not yet prepared to purchase online.
Tech Specs:
Data feed through ARIES. Products edited via XML file. Flash 9 with Flex. Tracking tags (Hitbox).
Results
At the end of the day what our partner’s end client truly really wanted was something neither they nor their competitors had. They wanted something that didn’t yet exist — and this sort of something is right in Sierra Bravo’s wheelhouse. The combination of our custom programming and our partner agency’s creative design gives shoppers a cool online tool to sort and compare products by brand, price, size, customer rating and more.
“For us, the benefit of working with Sierra Bravo was their team engaged immediately and had the capacity to turnaround a big project on a tight timeline,” said a contact at our partner agency. “We did the design and they built a prototype around it that achieved our client’s objectives, and from there Sierra Bravo kept on implementing every new screen we gave them — right up to the last late-nighter their programmers pulled to finish up.”
Our partner’s end client likes their new toy so much they want to use it to feature several other product lines. Consumers can link from specific product pages to the online comparison tool — with the comparison tool popping up in a new window. Choosers can be picky. Even to the casual shopper, the comparison tool is fun to play with — effectively making their shopping experience an enjoyable one.
This was Sierra Bravo’s first project with this agency through our Partner Program. Now, having achieved the collective goal to give online shoppers a fun and easy way to compare electronics, Sierra Bravo is enjoying an extended honeymoon period in our working relationship as partners, with several additional projects underway and a steady spark of in-common creativity.