"Diageo's brand platform content"

Project Requirements

1. Recommended and participated in discussions with different stakeholders in the portal ecosystem, the content team, the design team, the social team for alignment with technology
2. Review of UI/UX: Recommended best practices
3. SEO/ SEM (advisory role)
4. Development support: Development, Migration & Hosting support for CMS
5. Ongoing Maintenance: Application Maintenance, SEO and Infra optimizations

Implementation approach

1. Project Management 
   • Project Management methodology implemented was a Hybrid Approach. The project had overall timelines and within these timelines an Agile methodology was followed. 
   • During the initial stages, monthly in-person meetings were organized. Apart from that there were weekly review calls. 
   • Confluence was used for maintaining the requirement specifications, meeting minutes and action items
   • JIRA was used for Sprint management. 
2. Review of UI/UX - Key areas of assistance in UI/UX include:
   • We did a persona analysis of the user base and arrived at the user journeys. This was mapped out to the information architecture and sitemap and wireframes. This was then progressed into the graphic designs.
   • Review of user designs for technical compatibility 
   • UX best practices including inputs on best practices for responsive designs, color combinations for usability. 
   • Some specific suggestions were provided to assist in better utilization of website real estate, utilizing negative spaces with fluid components such as Ads and subscriptions.
3. SEO/SEM 
   • Site HTML structure evaluated and optimized for SEO
   • Site was optimized for voice search
   • Specific Schemas were targeted for specific result positioning on Google, e.g. Recipe schema
   • Meta Description & Meta Keywords for each content created
   • Customized schema generation for each content type
   • Best practices for URL Indexing & Redirections
   • Identifying key tools to measure SEO impact
   • AMP pages & optimization 
   • Suggesting keywords for articles.
4. Technical Features - This section details the technical creativity during development. 
   • Platform was built on Drupal Acquia Lightning Drupal Distribution for Enterprise Authoring. This helped us speed up the implementation of application by using out of the box features like Media, Workflow, etc.
   • Other Editorial tools include: Custom Ad Banners with Editorial Control, Provision for editors to create Special Brand Category Pages with zero support from Development team, Manage Newsletter subscriptions & Interface for creation of Newsletters 
   • Integration with Central Customer database through API calls, MFA was done using custom modules.
   • Caching Strategy -
     • Cookie based caching in Cloudfront to support personalized user content
     • Anonymous user Integration with S3 for assets 
     • Authenticated user - Drupal 8 tag based caching was leveraged
   • AMP enabled
   • Built on Enterprise cloud (AWS), Scalable Architecture was designed for seasonal peak traffic optimizing infrastructure resource utilization
   • Migration - Unimity has migrated 1000+ content items from existing site to Social GOAT. The process required mapping the existing data fields to new data fields. Utmost caution should be taken to migrate images & videos along with tags (Keywords) and SEO related fields like Alt Images, Meta Descriptions. 
   • Social Features - FB Commenting & Social Share
   • Security compliance/PIA/PII Compliance - In order to take care of PIA / PII Compliance, integration with the central customer datastore was implemented and all the data transition between the systems was through authenticated service calls over HTTPS
5. Unique Features
   • Personalization - Content personalization using user behaviours and history is under implementation.
   • Web Browser Notifications - Web browser notification enables the user to subscribe the notifications on Social GOAT site. When the user subscribes, a notification will pop up on User’s device whenever a new content is created. The User also has option to choose to get notifications for only when content is published in selected category like Fashion, Movies or Cricket etc.
   • Age Gate Integration - Pertaining to legal stipulations in India there was an Age Gate integration required for the Website. However, at the same time PII / PIA compliance had to be maintained. To satisfy both these conditions, Unimity has integrated Age Gate into the application where the form will be fetched from client’s infra and displayed in the front end where the user enters the DoB. This personal information will be sent & stored client’s central database.

Overview of results/Outcomes

1. Unimity was able to coordinate with an ecosystem of technology vendors across countries and launch the website on time
2. Provided critical inputs to the agency towards creating a contemporary UI/ UX design
3. Leverage Drupal 8’s Editorial Capabilities
4. Page Speed optimized to load in less than 2s
5. Project execution Speed - Migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 in 5 months

Testimonial from the client

Unimity Solutions was on-boarded as Technology Partner for the redesign and launch of SocialGOAT.in - our Consumer Engagement Website and have been closely working with our Technology and Marketing teams. They are a very technically-competent team as regards to Drupal knowledge. What is more commendable is their comprehension of overall business requirements and translating them to future ready technology deliverables. On multiple occasions during the project, the team went out of their way to ensure that all committed timelines were met. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Unimity for large-scale Drupal projects.

Khushboo Benani

Head – Influencer Marketing and Brand Advocacy

DIAGEO India