A Database Driven Web Site
Macmillan Publishing, a division of Pearson PLC, is one of the world’s largest computer book publishers. They asked Animatrix to redesign their web site with a strong individual identity for each of their imprints (such as Que, Sams, and Macmillan Software) while building a consistent interface across all the imprints. The also wanted us to maintain the sense that this site was part of the Pearson family.

We designed the site so that a user could get to any book page in 2 clicks. And so that they could get to that book page any way they chose - by imprint, by series, by subject area, or by using the search engine.

The project had quantifiable goals from the beginning: to increase book sales by 10% and to increase unique web visitors by a certain number per month. Happily, we exceeded both goals.

To add value for the user we designed each individual book page so that it provided sample chapters, updates, table of contents and customer support. The most popular feature on the book page was a set of ‘smart links’ that allowed users to see the current book price on Amazon or Barnes & Noble with just one click. This easy ‘comparison shopping’ increased book sales significantly.

The technical challenge was to work with the existing back end databases. After we constructed our data flow model, and spent some time ‘under the hood’ we eliminated one redundant database altogether. The front end of the site was done in Cold Fusion. Although we pulled Macmillan data from a master database for all of Pearson’s imprints (including Penguin, Prentice Hall, and Scott Foresman, to name a few) it was still surprisingly fast.