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METTLER TOLEDO EasyFinder 2.0
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| Site | METTLER TOLEDO EasyFinder 2.0 |
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| Industry | Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Goods and Services |
| Location | Switzerland |
| Provided by | seantis gmbh |
| Contact | Fabian Reinhard |
EasyFinder 2.0 is the newest online tool from METTLER TOLEDO that helps customers find and choose the right balance for their process, their budget and their environment.
Project Goals
The project had the following overall goals:
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Lead customers (end-users & dealers) to the right product with a minimum of questions
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Get direct quotes.
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The tool allows: filtering by criteria, product comparisons and gives explanations for results. It delivers customers a meaningful choice (value for money).
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The tool is modular designed and can be extended with additional functions and languages.
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Ease of use is key. The tool has to be dynamic in the sense that is provides intermediate feedback to user action.
To fullfill these requirements seantis developped the EasyFinder
2.0. As an online recommendation tool it makes heavy use of AJAX (KSS). The Zope/Plone framework allowed an extreme programming appoarch
including fast prototyping.
EasyFinder 2.0 is interactive and
the more information you specify, the better the balance recommended
suits your needs. After each criterion chosen the instruments matching
the new specifications are instantaneously updated, making the
selection fast, straightforward and intelligent.
AJAX - Plone KSS
KSS (Kinetic Style Sheets) allows a new kind of user experience by implementing a user interface with AJAX functionality. In contrast to a static website, KSS makes it possible to exchange information and show the resulting content without reloading the html page. That makes the selection process of the EasyFinder much faster and smoother.
The AJAX functionalities have been implemented without writing a single line of JavaScript code. Therefore the project team could focus on the developing tasks (Python code) instead of writing and debugging tricky JavaScript code.
Product Filtering - ZCatalog
An essential condition for the suitable use of AJAX is a fast backend that performs requests in a rapid way. Zope/Plone provides the ZCatalog as Zope's built in search engine. It allows the classification in categories and search of Zope objects. The EasyFinder relies on the ZCatalog for all search queries and makes use of the ZCatalog feature to search multiple indexes at once.
Multilanguage - Translations
The EasyFinder shows every customer the content automatically in the appropriate language version.
By default language selection is made on the basis of the browser language setting, alternatively the visitor can change manually between languages. Currently three languages are implemented, the translation of the site in further languages, including Chinese and Japanese is planned.
Thanks to LinguaPlone, the implementation of the multilanguage features consumed only limited effort and resources.
Country Detection
The product portfolio of METTLER TOLEDO differs between countries. Hence the EasyFinder has to make sure, that only the available products in regard to a visitors location (country) are visible. The EasyFinder fulfils that requirement by setting up a country detection mechanism. This functionality detects the users IP and aligns visitors to certain countries according to defined IP ranges. The IP ranges are stored in a MySQL database and the access is granted via the Python-MySQL database interface.
"METTLER
TOLEDO specializes in the area of precision instruments for
professional use. In addition to a wide product array, we offer the
most comprehensive range of services in our industry on a global level.
With more than 10,000 employees, we generate annual sales of over USD 1
billion. Mettler-Toledo International Inc. has been listed on the New
York Stock Exchange since 1997." http://www.mt.com/mt/businessDesc/businessDesc.jsp