Oxfam India was about to organize its trademark Trailwalker campaign in November 2013. But they struggled with several challenges related to website functioning and maintenance.
Challenges
- Underperforming payment gateways: There were multiple payment gateways on the Oxfam website. There were inconsistencies in the implementation which would sometime throw up blank pages. Oxfam wanted this donation payment process to be simplified.
- Working with multiple teams: Prior to working with Srijan, Oxfam India worked with multiple agencies. These agencies needed to work together, but there was no effective coordination mechanism in place.
- Need for cost-effective support: Oxfam India didn’t have in-house technical know-how about maintaining a website. Hence monitoring of projects and vendors was not an easy task either. They were dependent on vendors to solve everyday technical problems, which was not working out to be cost-effective for Oxfam. Oxfam was looking for a vendor who could deliver support reliably as well as cost-effectively.
Solution
Oxfam India agreed to have work in the agile method. Srijan put in place a bi-weekly sprint to resolve specific issues. Srijan’s team figured out that the website could perform much better if the servers were configured properly. Srijan’s server hosting partner, Keen & Able worked on the servers. They found configuration errors, unnecessary backups, and logins that were slowing the servers down. All these problems were fixed by their team.
Oxfam India also wanted to move their hosting to a cheaper option. Srijan’s team suggested a new option that reduced the hosting cost by half. Our team re-installed all the applications on the new server box within two weeks without the site seeing any downtime.
Srijan also found bugs in the HDFC payment gateway implementation. Our team did a fresh implementation and also implemented a new ICICI payment gateway.
Oxfam India needed the Trailwalker website functional before the event that was being organized in Mumbai in November 2013. It was decided that instead of fixing the implementation done earlier, Srijan should create the website from scratch. Oxfam India wanted to model the new website on the Trailwalker Australia website. We developed the website even though they didn’t have access to the backend of the Australia website.
Benefit
- Improved browsing experience: The Oxfam India website doesn’t slow down or show up bank pages anymore. This has led to a better browsing experience.
- No more payment failures: Because of payment gateway errors, Oxfam India was losing out on a lot of donations. After ’s support started, such failures are rare.
- Cost savings: Srijan’s recommendation for alternate server hosting has reduced the cost by half.
- Peace of mind: The Oxfam team doesn’t have to deal with multiple agencies anymore. Srijan is the only agency they work with. This allows them to focus on working towards their core agenda and ensures that the website functions smoothly.
- Successful Oxfam Trailwalker Mumbai: After built an efficient website, Oxfam India organized Mumbai Trailwalker that raised more than Rupees 5 million.
- Keeping tabs on website performance: Srijan shares monthly maintenance reports with Oxfam India. This enables Oxfam managers to keep track of every new development on the Oxfam website, functioning of their payment gateways and other details.
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