Web Portal

Large scale web portal.

Prototype was tasked to re-envision the Dubai Financial Market website and create a new system that would allow all business units within the organization to manage the content and available data.

The website itself holds a vast amount of data and content including all listed companies, reports, market data and bulletins. This data had to be merged with real-time stock market information and the ability for the client to make instant changes as needed. We therefore had to re-invent the information architecture and user experience as well as integrate the website with several systems to create one rich experience for end users.

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Solution Design.

The project started with workshops to gather all technical and non-technical requirements and also to define the IA: sitemap, page template layouts, content priorities, user journeys. The workshops included all business units one by one and later included a moderator to streamline the process.

All content was then structured into 2 generic UI component templates that would serve every possible need (i.e.: tabs, accordions, real time charts, tables, lists). All content pages were re-organized in order to consistently use one of the available components. Before starting the actual design we created interactive wireframes for the entire site, showing how pages are linked together and even showcasing the interactivity of some complex UI elements for example suggestive search boxes, calculators, custom filters or search panels.

The solution.

Powered by Sitefinity CMS.

Technical info.

Backend Integration.Since the website had to connect to multiple backend databases, we created a data layer to connect the Sitefinity front-end application with the complex databases sitting at the backend systems of the client. This middleware created a seamless connection to the backend databases but in some cases had its own tables; these tables got synchronized with the backend databases through stored procedures and batch processes running several times a day.

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Custom CMS Modules.We created over 20 Sitefinity custom modules, some with complex relationships between each other, and also with connectivity to the backend databases. This ensure the client has full control over the data displayed on the website. We implemented customized Sitefinity layout controls from scratch to allow the client to easily create their own tabs and accordions on any page without breaking the design or the ability to edit content.

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Real Time Data.In order to integrate the real-time market information, we developed a custom node.js real-time application. This application was integrated into multiple areas of the website. We further used simple media queries and JS techniques to make the site compatible with older browsers and smaller desktop screens as well as used more modern CSS/JS only for newer browsers.

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