Background:
Integrated Database India Limited (IDIL), an India Today group company is entering the online B2B directory space with their website www.networktoday.com. IDIL wanted a website as a directory of suppliers and the various products they sell.
The website serves as a marketplace which will allow users to register and then use various facilities on the site. An anonymous user can also browse the site and see explore features and listings. Based on the level of payment, some features of the site may or may not be visible.
- The site has 5 levels of users.
- Each user sees a different landing page for people logging in.
- Site level notifications for all user activity. Call back, registration, account upgrade, buy/sell requests, call-back requests, enquiry, microsite changes
- The number of sales or inquiry made on the product
- Member login page may have only tenders relevant to users registered categories
- Admin reporting panel; details of changes to all Revenue flags/fields - by member, with start/end dates etc.
- List of all users, by membership level, dates - site registration date, membership level start date, membership level end date, number of days member has been free
- Analytics for Listings: number of searches for a keyword; top cagetory and category accessed for listings for the keyword, number of clicks on listings, number of products viewed, number of enquiries, number of times video viewed, number of times clicks to an outside URL, number of Call Back requests etc.
- Ability to mark International members distinctly
- A product consists of title, search keyword, product-image, associated documents, multi-media, link to external URL, brief description, optional pricing information
- Products per-manufacturer “weight” based on:
- The number of sales or inquiry made on the product
- Admin has direct access to site-level analytics
- Different elements can be bought – like the Chat only functionality; Sell Offer , Buy Offer, call back requests etc
- Search results: Sort, make unique and then randomise result.
- Product search results output is a function of the following: If there are multiple hits of the same manufacturer in a category, only one of the products will be picked up, with a message “X more products from same supplier message” which is somewhat like a Google search. Also, any exception while adding a keyword – for example, if the keyword is found out to not belong to a member specific category, he will be flashed amessage confirming if the keyword is appropriate. All such exceptions are ‘flashed’ to the member. On the results page, at the top, below the bread crumb, where the category name/search keyword is specified - "Results in Category" or "Results for keyword "pumps"" - there will be an option to flip the view from Products to Suppliers
- Advertisements serviced using Google DFP
- Each micro-site has an admin
- Messaging Section: Report Spam, and Block User functionality. Messaging Section: Ability to delete messages etc
- Drupal version used is Drupal 6
- Apache SOLR has been tweaked to use facets as menu items and have search results itself as part of the content. A more detailed case study of how we tweaked the URLs to return search results for a category term URL, can be found here.
- SEO rules followed uniformly - in terms of URL, Meta Tags etc
Be it multiple administration levels, private messaging, analytics, managing scores of products and suppliers database, extensive search capabilities, streamlined and quick content, all have been managed using the combination of Drupal and Apache SOLR.
