Marina Bay Sands - Case Study

About the Project

Design, develop and deploy a new multilingual web presence driven by a content management system for the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

Goals

Marina Bay Sands opened in April with a opening celebration in June 2010 and is set to become a premier entertainment destination in Singapore and beyond, with its vibrant diversity of attractions and facilities. The vision was to build an integrated development that is timeless, a landmark that possesses a distinct identity which will distinguish Singapore from other cities.

The property's web presence needed to be just as distinct and inspiring. The site needed to be available in seven relevant languages and be easily found in search engines by potential customers around the world.

Project Details

Objectives

To assess Marina Bay Sands' existing website, its effective product display, existing reusable assets and architecture.
To consider website design best practices, requirements and essentials, and form a guide for the redesign of the MBS website.
To evaluate direct competitor and hotel industry leading websites, and to identify assets MBS require and areas to avoid.
To devise a timeline of phases for the development and deployment of the MBS website to best suit the needs of the various areas of the property and interest of the consumer.
To ensure technology and navigation tools selected comply with maximizing search optimization and drive traffic to site.

Requirements

Following best practices for website design, development and deployment, the client had drafted very detailed requirements for the new site. These were generated from an understanding of the business requirements collected via interviews, focus groups, scenario maps and use cases, and then defined in a Functional Requirements Document which included among other requirements:

World class user-centric design
Utilize web content management system with authoring and publishing workflows
Excellent lead generation
Search engine optimization
Non-technical staff's ability to easily add and edit content
Automated approval processes for content contributors
Automated translation workflow for language versions
Subscriptions, web alerts, and memberships
Site content and design that is search engine optimized (SEO) across all languages
Site framework that would allow for future growth; new content & sections.
Schedule content to go live and expire
Multilingual with the ability to easily add other languages
Internal search of content and library assets
Hosting to support 100% up time and traffic spikes during peak seasons and campaigns
Timeframe: 9 weeks

Project Details

Strategy and Planning (MBS)

Develop a strategy for Marina Bay Sands' digital communication and website platform including:
- Competitive analysis
- Best in practice audit
- Solution for technical, architectural and creative execution
Meet positioning and branding objectives and guidelines
Research and select interactive and localization agency partners

Design (MBS, Sid Lee)

Strategic and tactical analysis and recommendations
Project management and coordination
Ideation
Artistic direction
Creation of the editorial line
Creative QA
Electronic production (video and sound production)

Content Creation (MBS, Sid Lee)

English copy writing
Proofreading
Image sourcing and retouching
Content management
English content SEO

CMS-Development (MBS, GPI)

CMS overview and strategy
CMS development with Ektron
CMS translation workflows
Global search engine optimization
Website testing
Ektron CMS training for MBS

Localization (MBS, GPI)

Globalization strategy
Glossary development
Translation and copy writing
Country specific SEO
Localization QA and testing
Localization workflow training