Portfolio

Agora Financial

Leading online publisher of investment advice

Agora Financial, publisher of over a dozen online properties, needed to overhaul the design and structure of their sites, enhance the user experience with single sign-on authentication and a customer service center, and maximize upsell advertising potential. We built a new WordPress-powered platform for them with extensive custom features designed to make their business easier to run. We continue to work with them to keep the site up to date and running smoothly.

Changing platforms isn't easy

A challenging part of the project was migrating content from over a dozen publications into WordPress from the client's non-WordPress CMS. Due to the limited access that was available to the proprietary legacy system, a simple export was not possible. We built a scraper tool to crawl each publication site, extract the content and convert it to a common WordPress import format. Content was then imported with images and previous URLs intact. Redirects were automatically put into place so any future requests to old locations are sent to the right place.

Sign in once to access content across the blog network

On their old platform, a major complaint was that users subscribed to multiple publications had to log into each publication individually. For the new site, we built single sign-on authentication system that integrated with the client's custom middleware system. Additional functionality, such as content excerpts and showing content conditionally on a page for logged in and public users was developed to maximize upsell potential.

Pixel perfect design implementation

Agora Financial brought us a new design that better reflected the quality of their publications. We took their design and constructed WordPress themes for both their main site and the individual franchise sites. They were pleased with how closely the actual implementation resembled their detailed design comps. We worked with them to further refine their design on key pages to optimize user experience and visual appeal.

Customer service-focused user experience

In order to provide users with a richer experience, a My Account section of the site was added. This displays the latest content for each publication that a user is subscribed to on a single page. In addition, functionality was added to list current subscriptions, other available publications, and a sidebar features to recommended additional products.

Custom advertising system

To fulfill the advanced advertising needs for the new site, Crowd Favorite implemented the OpenX Open Source ad system and built and customized WordPress plugins to integrate with, build upon and improve the system's existing functionality. With the new system, Agora Financial is able to provide targeted advertising, rotating and statics ads, and can serve content based on context and user profiles.

Ability to create new publication blogs

A main goal for the new site was to deliver content for each publication in uniform way with the ability to customize the look. They also wanted the ability to easily create new publication sites, based on the existing theme and content structure, without needing to involve Crowd Favorite. We built a powerful "duplicate site" tool to allow this. With this tool, the client has saved considerable time and development dollars, and it has allowed them to take greater control of their site.

Support, education, and ongoing development

Since the launch of the site, we have continued to work closely with Agora Financial, providing ongoing support and development services. These services include providing training on how to modify and manage their site, performing WordPress and plugin upgrades to keep the site safe and current, and building new functionality to keep Agora Financial competitive and in better control of their site. We love building sites that our clients can run themselves.

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