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Visit this Site: www.emenus.ca
The Client
Emenus.ca is the leading Canadian online dining guide, providing restaurants across Canada with a
premiere online marketing solution. Being a value-added service of Sysco, the largest food
distributor in North America, the Emenus.ca service is distributed across Canada through
Sysco-owned food distributors.
The Situation
Emenus.ca needed a company that could implement an entire integrated marketing, branding, and web
service deployment strategy. Part of this would involve the need to develop and deploy an online
portal whose service offering would span to restaurants across Canada. However, the site's users
would be from across the world. The portal would have to be driven by a powerful content
management system that would allow for constant daily updating to ensure that site content stays
fresh as well as to ensure the seamless additions of new restaurants from across the country.
Turnaround time on the development and posting of each new restaurant is a priority to Emenus.ca
so the content management system would have to be extremely user friendly in order to ensure rapid
development and deployment of each restaurant.
Screenshots of Emenus.ca Website
The Solution
It was obvious that the first stage of this project would need the expertise of our advisory
services. An advisory team took on the task of carefully consulting with all stakeholders
involved, analyzing and gauging their expectations and needs. A fully integrated strategy was
developed with clearly defined goals and timelines. This integrated strategy, addressing all
areas of the Emenus.ca program, continues to be refined as the project progresses.
Market research and user studies were carried out to gauge the viability of the Emenus.ca business
model; changes and refinements were made to the business model based on the results and analysis
of this research.
Once the foundation for the business was set, Netimage Media took on the development of branding
and identity for the service. After an iterative process that included the involvement of all the
key stakeholders, a colour scheme, logo, slogans, and more were developed. These would be used to
uniquely identify the Emenus.ca service to users everywhere.
Development of the portal itself was done using the latest Microsoft .NET technologies as well as
Netimage Media's own proprietary .NET development platform. This greatly increased the speed of
development while ensuring that the portal remained extremely robust and scalable. Scalability is
key because of the gradual nationwide expansion and the fast pace at which new restaurants and
content are added. The whole portal is run by a powerful content management system custom built by
Netimage Media. The site administrators are able to log-in securely and create content and
additional pages, even additional service areas (as new cities are added) with great ease and no
programming knowledge. As well, restaurant owners are able to log-in securely using their own
unique username and passwords; they are then able to make extensive changes and updates to their
own websites on the portal, including changes to their menus, information, address, and much more.
All these changes are dynamic and instantly propagate throughout the entire portal.
The portal would also feature a custom designed e-commerce system that would allow registered
users to purchase discounted gift certificates to those restaurants that have them available. An
advanced anti-fraud system also had to be developed in order to prevent possible negligent use of
these certificates.
Unique and very powerful interactivity tools were developed and integrated into the portal,
allowing it to create a community of registered users who will come back again and again.
To support the portal, Netimage Media designed and deployed the infrastructure that Emenus.ca
needed. From design of the hardware setup to actually ordering the servers and installing
everything, all aspects of hardware infrastructure were taken care of, including a clear strategy
for handling future growth and expansion.
A fully integrated, cross-platform marketing program was developed for Emenus.ca, setting out
their strategy and clearly defining the ways in which they will get their name out to the public
and to the restaurant industry. Netimage Media also provided design of all printed and marketing
material including business cards, brochures, system manuals, sales materials, and much more.
Content Management System for Emenus.ca
The Result
Netimage Media has delivered outstanding results to Emenus.ca throughout this continuing project.
We delivered in all of the following ways as described above:
- developing an integrated strategy
- conducting market research
- creating a cohesive brand and identity across multiple channels
- developing a cutting edge portal integrated with advanced member community, e-commerce, and content management systems
- deploying the needed network and hardware infrastructure
- planning and executing an integrated cross-platform marketing program
Netimage Media continues to work with Emenus.ca and Sysco Foods on a long-term basis in all of the
areas above. This long term relationship ensures that Emenus.ca achieves the best result and
success possible as it takes advantage of our work and expands across Canada. Our solution
effectively grows as our client grows, ensuring that all their needs are met.
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