bitsinmotion GmbH, based in Mainz, Germany, received a Pageflex Innovation Award for “The Most Innovative Storefront Interface”. They have been a Pageflex customer since 2008, using Storefront to support the customization and ordering of marketing materials by various franchises.
Although Storefront gave them support for complex variability, high quality rendering, and reliable performance, bitsinmotion realized that to truly meet their customers’ needs, they would need to create a framework to enhance, and in some cases, completely over-ride the built-in user interface.
“We wanted to really leverage the extensive customization that Pageflex offers,” comments Adrian Stanek bitsinmotion CEO and Developer. “But if our users don’t have an attractive and simple workflow, they won’t use the solution. As a small company, we also knew that we needed to create something that is scalable, upgradable, and reproducible. Our ultimate goal was to be able to quickly create unique custom sites for any customer or market – something easy for them to use and for us to manage, but with extensive functionality.”
bitsinmotion used the BitsLib Framework to modify the out-of-the box interface, leveraging the Storefront API so that they can easily migrate their sites to new versions. Extensive scripting and a unique XML-based configurator control elements for complex layouts within a wizard-like interface. A remote workflow management component enables intelligent management of the site content, including sophisticated pricing, supplier codes and support for automated production.
When bitsinmotion had an opportunity to create a web platform for an international real estate company to customize and order marketing material, they successfully implemented their Storefront framework to support almost 400 agents speaking three different languages.
“One of the things that Pageflex offers is the ability to support multiple variations from a single template,” said Bernd Sutter, CEO and Co-Founder of bitsinmotion. “This is not only a time-saver, but it helps to guarantee that branding standards are consistently maintained. The site contains multi-lingual templates available in different layouts with over 400 variables, but with the GUI we created, users are handling these documents with no problems at all”.
The system was so successful that bitsinmotion is now looking at expanding the real estate franchise’s use of Pageflex. They have realized their aim of being able to build complex sites efficiently with non-programmer resources, and have recently announced the availability of a boxed version of their framework.
Congratulations to bitsinmotion for making the most of Pageflex Storefront APIs and other tools to satisfy customer requirements!
