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

Basel, 05. May 2010 – Globally active trade fair operator, Messe Frankfurt (www.messefrankfurt.com), has turned to Day Software’s (www.day.com) web content management system (WCMS) for its World Wide Web presence. Thanks to CQ5’s outstanding flexibility, Messe Frankfurt now offers a professional and progressive web presence both for its central trade fair site and the uniquely designed sub-pages of the individual exhibitions. Given the scope of the exhibition operator’s web presence, which includes over 8,000 individual pages with over 200,000 hits a day, CQ5 plays a crucial role in efficiently managing the content of around 150 web presences.

The project’s challenge was that while the sub-pages of the individual exhibitions have to be designed separately 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 all general service offerings for events, such as directions to the fair ground and the central media section for journalists. These features help lower the administrative overheads considerably. “One of our main challenges was to offer the maximum possible design flexibility for each exhibition site, while remaining compliant with Messe Frankfurt’s corporate design policies,” says Day Software project manager, Conrad Wöltge. With CQ5, this was effortless.

A key requirement of the new content management system was to maximize the interactiveness of the exhibition’s web presence and help turn each trade fair into a true online experience. With CQ5, it is possible to integrate Flash intros effortlessly into pages. Another benefit is the “My Account” service, where exhibition visitors gain single sign-on access to all of Messe Frankfurt’s events and can set up personalized Favorite lists. A further feature is its exceptional user-friendliness based on WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) technology. This means that staff can view pages exactly as they will appear online, while editing. As Messe Frankfurt is one of the world’s pre-eminent trade-fair, exhibition, convention and concert organizers, it was vital to have an extremely robust system capable of supporting many editors making simultaneous changes to the websites. Over thirty editors are currently using the system, a number that can be increased as desired with CQ5.

Despite the scope of the project and Messe Frankfurt’s demanding requirements, the implementation was completed in just three months. In this time one of CQ5’s features was especially useful. While the system was still being implemented, editors were trained on the “live” system with which they would later be working. 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,” adds his colleague Stefanie Stapper.