Prepress

Day Software makes Messe Frankfurt’s web presence a true online experience

Wednesday 05. May 2010 - CQ5 solution enables efficient content management for around 150 trade exhibitions

Globally active trade fair operator, Messe Frankfurt, has turned to Day Software’s web content management system (WCMS) for its World Wide Web presence. Thanks to CQ5’s outstanding flexibility, Messe Frankfurt can offer a professional and progressive web presence both for its central trade fair site, as well as the diversely designed sub-pages of the individual exhibitions – including those of leading international trade fairs Ambiente, Heimtextil and Automechanika. Given the scope of the exhibition operator’s web presence – a total of over 8,000 individual pages, chalking up over 200,000 hits a day – CQ5 plays a crucial role in efficiently managing the content of around 150 web presences.

Individual exhibition presences in a uniform layout
The project’s challenge was that, while the sub-pages of the numerous individual exhibitions have to be designed individually to fulfill the needs of and address the target audience concerned, they also need to have a uniform look and feel. With CQ5, each trade fair can now access general service offerings identical for every event – such as directions to the fair ground. There is also a central media area for journalists which is used collectively by all trade fairs. These features help lower the administrative overheads considerably. “One of our main challenges was to offer each exhibition maximum possible design flexibility, while remaining compliant with Messe Frankfurt’s corporate design policies,” says Day Software project manager, Conrad Wöltge. With CQ5, this was child’s play.

Interactive experience
A further key requirement of the new content management system was to maximize exhibition presence interactivity and help turn each trade fair into a true online experience. With CQ5, it’s possible to integrate Flash intros effortlessly into the pages, for example. A further benefit of the new solution: with the central service “My Account”, exhibition visitors gain single sign-on access to all of Messe Frankfurt’s events, for which they can set up personalized Favorite lists. A further plus in CQ5’s favor – its exceptional user-friendliness based on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) technology – means that when staff view pages during editing, they see them exactly as they’ll appear later on, online. And last but not least, with Messe Frankfurt one of the world’s preeminent trade-fair, exhibition, convention and concert organizers, it was vital to have an extremely roust system capable of supporting large numbers of editors making simultaneous changes to the websites. Over thirty editors are currently using the system – a number that can be increased with CQ5 as desired.

Simultaneous implementation and training
Despite the scope of the project and Messe Frankfurt’s demanding requirements, the implementation went according to plan, lasting just three months. In this time, one of CQ5’s features came in especially useful: even while the system was still being implemented, editors were being trained on the “live” system with which they would be working later on. After the launch of the first pages, the platform was extended step by step with further exhibition pages being migrated to CQ5.

“Day Software delivered a solution that allows us to realize all our visions of a progressive, state-of-the-art website,” says Messe Frankfurt project manager, Martin Meller. “Now, CQ5 not only allows our editors to work more efficiently, but its intuitive graphical user interface makes it a pleasure to do so,” continues his colleague Stefanie Stapper.