hilton grand vacations case study - highly scalable desktop & mobile sites with dnn enterprise...
DESCRIPTION
Using the Enterprise features of DotNetNuke, HiltonGrandVacations.com serves 150,000 customers around the world on desktop and mobile devices. Join Arrow Consulting & Design's Founder Ryan Morgan and Creative Director Henry Tavarez as they explore the business case, creative process, and technology used to create the desktop and mobile implementations of Hilton Grand Vacations' central web property.TRANSCRIPT
HILTON GRAND VACATIONS CASE STUDY: HIGHLY SCALABLE DESKTOP & MOBILE SITES WITH DNN ENTERPRISE EDITION
Ryan Morgan & Henry TavarezArrow Consulting & Design
Meet Ryan Morgan
Ryan Morgan is the Founder and Managing Partner at Arrow Consulting & Design.
Arrow Consulting & Design is a software development and web consulting firm 30 people strong specializing in DNN, Mobile, SharePoint, ASP.NET and WPF/Silverlight.
Author for Wrox and MSDN on the topics of DNN and SharePoint
http://arrowdesigns.com/meet-the-team/ryan-morgan
Meet Henry Tavarez
Henry Tavarez is the Creative Director at Arrow Consulting & Design
Designed and skinned the core DotNetNuke template for DNN 6
UX architect for national and internationally used web-based products and services
Developed user interfaces for several e-commerce platforms
http://www.arrowdesigns.com/meet-the-team/henry-tavarez
About Hilton Grand Vacations
Part of Hilton Worldwide
Serve more than 150,000 customers
Over 50 properties worldwide
Pain Points
Initially built web on LAMP stack
Lacked integration with core Microsoft systems
Separate marketing and transaction systems
Inefficiency with daily tasks and maintenance
Business Needs
Unify platform for management of websites
Simplify content management for employees
Handle periodic heavy loads of traffic
Reach more users though mobile
Discovery
What are the most used features on the website?
What pain points do your customers have with browsing the site?
How do employees manage the resort information?
Mobile Optimized vs Responsive Design
What do we think our users want to accomplish with mobile?
Will the employees manage multiple sources of content?
Mobile Application Mindset vs Website Browsing Mindset
Information Architecture
Consolidate site map down to core sales funnels
Remove the clutter to focus on primary call to actions
Skins – Meta Tags
Mobile specific meta tags and head tags
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/Portals/_default/Skins/Hilton-Mobile-V2/apple-touch-icon.png"/>
Skins – jQuery Mobile
jQuery Mobile is tested on multiple devices.
Brings features like AJAX navigation, touch events, mobile optimized UI
Highly customizable theming
Large community and many available plugins
Skins – DNN Mobile Redirect
Redirect rules capture users coming from mobile devices and redirect to m.hiltonvacations.com
LinkToFullSite skin objects allow the user to browse back to the desktop site once they have been redirected
Skins - IsAuthenticated
Difficulty managing admin of jQuery Mobile site
Admins need ability to access additional features
<% If Not IsAdmin Then%> (pseudo code)
// load jQuery Mobile
// do something…
<% End If%>
Skins - SkinObjectsEX
Mobile sites must perform efficiently and be mindful of users data plans
Using these skin objects allow use of Client Resource Management feature of DNN which:
– Reduces file size of each resource
– Combines resources into fewer files
You can find the module at http://DNNSkinObjectsEX.codeplex.com/
Custom Modules
Web services integrate with custom Hilton backend
Same services leveraged for Resort Gallery on desktop and mobile
Custom Modules
Views work with jQuery Mobile to navigate the site using AJAX
Uses list view controls from jQueryMobile to create mobile friendly navigation
Custom Modules
Custom jQuery plugins manage the photo gallery for mobile devices with slideshow and swipe features
Images delivered though Web Services API from Hilton Resort Admin
Custom Modules
Directions call Google Map API to generate mobile friendly maps right on the site without having to navigate to the phone map application
Web Farms
Hilton uses a distributed web farm architecture that efficiently handles the heavy traffic load without requiring shared file servers.
Architecture was provided by Applied Innovations
Web Farms
Leveraging web-farm features in DotNetNuke enterprise
Custom private cloud configuration with our partner Applied Innovations
High-availability and easy scalability through load-balanced web front ends
Designed to handle burst peak traffic and sustained high traffic
Automatic failover in the Web and SQL Servers
Thank You!
Questions? Email us at
Follow Ryan @arrownuke
Follow Henry @elevel
Find us on the web at arrowdesigns.com