Interactive and user-friendly approach to helping visitors live the Montreal experience online
Ottawa, ON – July 28th , 2008 – Cactus Commerce, a provider of software and services for e-business, is proud to announce their contribution to the new cutting edge Tourism Montreal website as part of a multimillion dollar investment in promotion by Tourism Montreal.
“We want people to be seduced by Montreal and discover what it has to offer,”said Charles Lapointe, President and CEO of Tourism Montreal. “Our new interactive site helps visitors plan their trip and pinpoint what attractions they want to see using creativity and cutting edge technology that awaken the senses, provoke and elicit a reaction. “ The website also encourages visitors to enrich the content themselves by commenting on information and share their Montreal experience for example.
“Cactus Commerce provided the technical expertise and implementation of the Tourism Montreal website. Our biggest challenge was to embrace creativity while integrating a technology developed for dynamic content management” states Benoit Lavigne, General Director of IT Services at Cactus Commerce. “We also wanted to meet the users various behaviors while putting together two complete and different ways to discover the city: one, a full screen video mode focused on the experience, the second, more textual and information-oriented, at the same time allowing fluid movement between the modes from anywhere in the site” continues Mr. Lavigne.
The website was built by keeping the number of page refreshes to the minimum (« application » mode), most of the server exchanges being made as background tasks This was done using extensively AJAX technology to be the project as an application, such as Facebook or Google Maps, to allow the users the choice of advanced commands including drag’n drop, dynamic selections, user-friendly URLs for example.
In addition, Cactus Commerce retained overall responsibility in the delivery of the project; accountable for planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives while adhering to classic project constraints—scope, quality, time and budget.
Due to the limitations associated with the sites’ indexing, visibility and accessibility, a considerable amount of attention and creativity was needed to merge these revolutionary techniques with existing search engine standards. Benoit states “In order to optimize functions, searches and filters we also conducted a number of tests - usability as well as indexing - notably during two major sessions held in New York, Boston and Toronto to ensure to get the better of the two worlds – innovation and a more classic approach.”
The technological prowess was achieved using Microsoft AJAX.NET, a solution offering full client-side functionality, giving the user a much more flexible experience with rich visuals. The content is updated seamlessly, which is dependent on the user context, without refresh or reloads. The database is built using Microsoft SQL Server 2005, the project was developed using Visual Studio 2008 and hosted with Microsoft Windows Server 2008. Instrumental in the successful delivery of the new Tourism Montreal website was the involvement of Sid Lee for the artistic direction, video production and Flash technology.
About Cactus Commerce
Cactus Commerce is an e-business software and services company that develops large scale solutions around Microsoft BizTalk Server and Commerce Server for major Retailers, Consumer Goods, Manufacturers, and Healthcare companies throughout North America. Clients include Tommy Hilfiger, Energizer, Jean Coutu, Credit Valley Hospital and Ocean Spray. For more information, visit www.cactuscommerce.com.
Media Contact
Wanda Cadigan
Director, Marketing
Cactus Commerce
(819) 778-0313
Wanda.cadigan@cactuscommerce.com