Case Study - Ship By Bid

The story of the Ship By Bid project commenced on a heartwarming note for the team of IT Chimes. We discovered that our client had mistakenly deposited 500% of the initial project cost in advanced instead of the 50% that was earlier discussed. Our accounts team immediately notified our Business Head who ordered the amount to be refunded in full. Further, without waiting for the client to repay the correct amount, our team began work on the project. This gesture from our side not only left the client impressed but helped in forging a strong mutual bond of trust throughout the course of the project. The Ship By Bid project came to us as concept which aimed at bridging the gap between the service providers and their customers from the shipping industry. The service providers here were the freight and auto shipping agencies (carriers) and the customers were the everyday people who were looking to get their belongings shipped (shippers). IT Chimes’ web development team found the idea very appealing as it presented an opportunity to develop and work on an excitingly new project.

Business Challenges

The team was at task with designing a website that was different from the other websites offering similar services so that it could carve its own identity in the industry. This was only possible if the Ship By Bid website offered some excitingly new features that its peers could not. The user interface of the website was to be in such a way that it was easy to use and navigate by even the most common of the people who had little knowledge of handling web based applications. It was just to serve as an online meeting point between the carriers and shippers. Hence the website needed to be simple and one which provided a user friendly experience. From the onset of the project, the client was, as requested, involved in the all stages of development. Our IT Chimes web development team readily implemented all the changes that the clients asked to be made on the various aspects of the project.

Technical Challenges

It always requires some imaginative thinking to come up with ideas for any project that make it stand out amongst the rest of the competition. To make the Ship By Bid website superior to its peers in terms of the features it had to offer, some fair amount of research was required for conceptualizing utilities within website for the enhancement of user experience. There was a need to find a way through which the carriers could be notified as quickly as possible so that they do not miss out on potential business, but without the need for accessing the Ship By Bid website directly. It was observed that the website seemed to load slower than expected. Also, the search process on the basis of certain parameters such as city, state, shipper name, start and end date took too much time and this was unacceptable.

Solutions

The Ship By Bid website had some unique features that our web development team included, one of which was the ‘5 criteria system’ which helped carriers take shipping orders filtered according to the details set in the criteria. Other features were the electronic invoice generation, a star rating system for shippers and carriers and auto-fill function while filling state and city location information, based on zip code. The team added a new process where the shipping agency would be able to receive read or unread notifications through email. The web development team figured out that the problem was due to the server which hosted the website. After consultation with the client, the website was shifted to another server which led to the problem being solved immediately.

Impact

The Ship By Bid website not only turned out as per the design expectations but it was clearly better than the other websites catering to the shipping industry. Aside from its advanced features, the website was easy to use and navigate, apart from being high on user experience, something which had been a key consideration at the beginning of the project.