Case Study - Eton College

Following an in-depth 6-way competitive pitch process, Blue Level were chosen to be the digital agency tasked with the redevelopment of Eton College’s website and associated projects.

For such a prestigious and historic educational establishment to select us as a tendering agency, and then for us to win the account, was an enormous privilege and a great win for the company as we went into our 12th year of operation.

The final pitch process came down to a "head-to-head" against the incumbent agency and we had praise for our approach, passion and interest in what we want to develop for Eton - not a case of the agency "telling", more a case of the agency "asking and leading".

Our previous expertise integrating and customising mainstream CRM and fundraising systems (Blackbaud's The Raisers Edge for example) stood us in good stead for the development as the future plans include providing a fully integrated inter, intra and extra-net.

The project brief required the development of a series of features above and beyond the standard redesign and population of content. With the requirements including direct, dynamic linkage with the internal School diaries, real-time match and fixture information, as well as secured internal data and news publishing for staff and pupils it was always going to be a cutting-edge development.

Dynamic data feeds were developed using RSS integrations, with both secure and public news feed systems utilised. Real-time match data and fixture information was integrated to allow last minute alterations to scheduled events to be updated online instantly via the College’s internal communications. Add to this YouTube video integration, streaming audio and "normal" content, and you have a content rich and driven site.

Eton College are a very forward-thinking school, and we were able to implement a number of exciting up-and-coming technologies to enhance the site further.

Notably this included direct database and CMS level integration with some of Microsoft LiveLabs newest technologies – Virtual Earth and Photosynth.

By integrating location data at a database level with the mapping and positioning features of Virtual Earth, site users are able to see locations of matches and events as well as get directions to pitches.

Location management is all controlled via bLive and even goes as far as having different pitch locations displayed dependent on the time of year - so you can find your football pitch in the winter and your cricket pitch in the summer!

Eton were in the very enviable position to be involved in the first UK based Photosynth development project, and after thousands of photographs and months of development, the college was virtualised – part of the tour can be seen here.

By mashing-up Photosynth data and Virtual Earth data into one “view”, dynamically evolving tours have been created. Have a look..>!

All in all, this is a development project that had a very concentrated development path and an end result that was on time, on budget and most importantly delivered in excess of the client’s expectations.

A testimony from the College Bursar, Mr Andrew Wynn:

I would like to thank you and your team for a job really well done.   Eton’s new website has received a lot of immediately favourable comment.   Any improvements we need to make are down to content, not design, and the design meets all our objectives to date.

The way you have worked with our IT team to merge the website with our internal news and diary databases is impressive and features like parents finding not only what pitch their sons will be playing a match on, but a map as well, are ground-breaking for a website like ours.

The editing features are powerful and easy and you have coped with our own foibles and failings with flexibility, understanding, efficiency and a smile.   We went live on time and the Eton team is grateful for what Blue Level has done.

We look forward to working with you on further phases of development.

Andrew Wynn Bursar, Eton College