Building the DirectAxis Corporate Website

Problem: DirectAxis needed to redesign and redevelop their corporate website on top of an enterprise web content management system with the goal of enabling easy authoring, approval and updating of content across the organisation. This content needed to be presented in a device-responsive way with the ability to personalise and adapt the user experience to be context-specific.

Solution: Implement DirectAxis’s corporate website on a world-class web content management system which meets all of their outlined objectives.

Project Overview

NML partnered with Native VML in creating DirectAxis’s new corporate website. The fully responsive website was implemented on the Sitecore Experience Platform.

Feature Highlights

• A ‘slick yet simple’ UX and content structure focusing on quality, rather than quantity content for the customer
• Online loan application process
• A secure customer portal, with the ability for customers to register and log in to access Pulse, a free product where clients can access a detailed view of their credit health
• Medical aid quote generation and comparison tool powered by Jenus
• Short term insurance quote and comparison tool powered by FSP Solutions
• Integration with DirectAxis’s life insurance and short-term insurance lead generation webservice
• Web search and Frequently Asked Questions powered by Sitecore and Lucene
• Custom event tracking and analytics powered by Google Tag Manager and Sitecore xDB, allowing DirectAxis to gain deeper insight into how their customers are interacting with their website
• Full Sitecore Experience Platform implementation including the following Sitecore features:
  • Experience Analytics and User Profiling
  • Personalisation
  • Campaign Management
  • AB Testing
  • Adaptive Rendering
• Fully responsive front end across all major browsers and mobile devices

Technology Used

We constructed the DirectAxis corporate website using the following technology:

• Sitecore 8.2 Experience Platform
• SQL Server
• MongoDB
• ASP.NET MVC
• Lucene.Net

We chose the Sitecore Experience Platform because it is a leader on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms. It also provides comprehensive digital marketing tools, a holistic view of customer data, and machine learning-generated insights to personalise experiences across channels. The Sitecore Experience Platform is built on ASP.NET, which makes it an excellent fit from a development point of view. This is due to NML’s extensive ASP.NET experience, DirectAxis’s predominantly Microsoft infrastructure stack, as well as their own in-house Microsoft .NET skills.

Architecture

The full Sitecore Experience Platform multi-server architecture includes the following components:

• Two content delivery servers (load balanced)
• One Content management server
• SQL server
• MongoDB server for analytics

Integration with several API's and webservices including the following:

• DirectAxis' user service API that powers customer registration, log in and the customer portal
• DirectAxis' Pulse aggregator soap service that powers the Pulse product page
• Jenus' soap service that powers the medical aid quote and comparison tool

The website’s load balanced, fully redundant hosting environment is managed by DirectAxis’s IT department.