Introduction
Cars are one of the hottest selling products in the Middle East. A Qatar-based start up business aimed to add a digital dimension to the industry by creating the region’s first dedicated online automotive marketplace. Carsemar approached Flip with a brief to develop a one stop shop platform for the region where both dealerships and individuals can place listings for used and new cars. Flip media was engaged to advise on a digital implementation strategy as well as design and develop the portal in both English and Arabic.
The Challenge
Making a purely digital brand and business work in a region where e-commerce has yet to take flight can be daunting. The first major challenge was managing the massive amount of content required to maintain the site. Buyers expect to see as much detail as possible when purchasing a car, especially from an online business. At the same time users need to be able to upload and maintain listings in a straightforward, seamless manner.
The Solution
Content Population
Flip developed an approach to make the process efficient and user friendly for site users, but also exhaustive for visitors and potential buyers. In the automotive industry, changes to cars are very frequent, with models being modified from year to year. Using purchased manufacturer data for 20,000 stock cars, Flip developed a simple interface consisting of a series of prepopulated dropdown choices which reveal options based on year, make and model. This makes the site easy to use, but also provides powerful, in-depth information for car purchasers.
On the backend, in order for Carsemsar to quickly populate the website for launch and regularly manage huge masses of data, Flip developed an efficient filter-based import/export engine to enable the information from those 20,000 cars to be imported by Excel spreadsheet.
Language capability
This import/export feature has been extended for mass-translation purposes as well . Navisite built projects can export content en-masse and then re-import into a new language, creating translated content which is still connected to the source language content.
For users this means once a car ad is posted in one language, it is automatically translated without any extra effort, allowing for both English and Arabic listings simultaneously.
Server Optimization
Portal websites potentially have huge amounts of traffic with regular spikes. Managing a server farm is not always realistic for startups, so alternative methods were required to ensure server stability and meet load demands. Flip Media built a custom Amazon S3 plugin which places all imagery, JavaScript and CSS files on a distributed network which reduces the number of connections to the webserver by a fact of 200+, greatly lightening the load for increases in traffic.
Added value to corporate customers
A unique way for an online automotive portal to get offline dealerships to list with them is to give dealerships an online edge they could not normally achieve through a standard online classified website. Flip developed a unique live statistical reporting tool which allows Carsemsar’s corporate customers to get real-time stock management statistics and view industry wide supply-and-demand.
Car information on the go
Dealers and car buyers on the move often need to access details about cars they have viewed. Flip developed a streamlined mobile internet version was designed and built in both English and Arabic which provides no-nonsense, quick and light connectivity to all listings on the website.
