Objective

Ricardo is a leading provider of technology, product innovation, engineering solutions and strategic consulting to the world's automotive, transport and energy industries.

EMLEG is a comprehensive summary of worldwide exhaust emissions regulations. Both current and future regulations are summarised, covering up to 40 countries.

Comments and explanations by a Ricardo specialist are included where appropriate. The service is accessed via a secure area on the Ricardo website.

Ricardo wishes to develop and deploy an up rated EMLEG product, improving current functionality and providing a better user experience to their target market(s).

Ricardo requested Motorpilot Ltd to provide a solution to deliver an on-line application and provide on-going support after initial launch.

Creative

The public facing area of the website was created with a sympathetic 'look and feel' driven by the off-line brochure material and corporate ID provided by Ricardo.

Motorpilot Ltd provided feedback during all design stages and suggested that the new identity was also able to be expanded to allow future development of similar online activities and products within the suite.

Utilising a user centric methodology, Motorpilot Ltd provided a new structure to the EMLEG product with a dynamic intuitive navigation and clearly presented result pages.

Technical

The Ricardo EMLEG product was previously assembled from a series of static web pages which contained a vast amount of unique content across a broad range of topics. Motorpilot Ltd looked at structuring this data into a more generic format before implementing into a dynamic database.

Motorpilot Ltd created a more user focussed data structure that allowed the searching and returning of results in a more logical sequence.

The new structure allowed ease of future update and the ability to use a template based system to drive all data entries and results for users.

After agreement of data structure the new site was built with a Content Management System (CMS) providing the interface. The CMS was tailored to allow specific information to be entered and categorised against the agreed structure by designated administrators.

To enhance the interactivity and streamline the users workflow, an Adobe Flash based navigation system was created, providing a simple 3 click solution to return any result from the database.

This component was integrated directly with the CMS, organically growing dependent upon the database entries by the administrator(s).

Result

After an initial soft launch to current users, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Uptake of the service has increased and user activity has shown a large growth.

The user centric focus has provided an easy-to-use interface that also accommodates the need for the pages to be HTML and print friendly.

Inline with current customer growth, sales of the service have increased.

Daily updates to the service are being made in an autonomous way, with all aspects of the site controlled by Ricardo designated administrators.