4-page Case Study - Posted 10/6/2008
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Motorcycle Magazine Creates Web Site with Interactive, Navigable Routes and Maps
The Italian publisher Leditore publishes five magazines, including EuroMoto, a monthly motorcycle magazine offering high-quality graphics, in-depth content, detailed product tests, and a complete online version. Leditore wanted to customize the EuroMoto.eu Web site to provide motorcycle enthusiasts with innovative, interactive tools for examining reports and maps of motorcycle tour routes in Europe. The publisher used Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ mapping technology to build an interactive mapping page on EuroMoto.eu where users can review motorcycle routes generated by editorial staff and registered users. With its advanced online mapping feature, Leditore is enhancing the community identity of the EuroMoto readership, promoting synergy between EuroMoto’s online and printed offerings, and offering a service that is unique in its market.
Situation
Leditore is a new and assertive publishing house, founded in 2004 as a spinoff from a long-established Italian publishing group. Currently publishing five magazines, EuroMoto, AFDigitale, La Sposa, Bimbi e Bebè, and Montebianco, Leditore has 50 employees and annual revenues of around €5 million (approximately U.S.$7.8 million).
Leditore publishes innovative and interactive magazines that forge a special link with their readers. This is especially true at EuroMoto, a monthly motorcycle magazine with a multifaceted approach to excellence in the motorcycle publications sector.
EuroMoto offers serious enthusiasts extremely detailed product tests unparalleled in the sector, including a multitude of instrumental test data. This technical information comes in a classic sporting magazine format with high-quality photography and design, and thorough, up-to-date sports coverage, product reviews, reports on motorcycling trends, market figures, price lists, and tour routes. These classic and innovative elements permeate both the printed monthly magazine and its online version, EuroMoto.eu, which is considered central to the publication’s overall business.
Italy is a primary European market for motorcycles and motorcycle accessories, and EuroMoto is primarily Italian in perspective. But motorcycling is a pan-European phenomenon, and the magazine covers motorcycling over the whole of Europe, with readership throughout the region. “Leditore doesn’t believe in products just conceived for a local market,” says Gianfranco Giardina, Web Division Manager at Leditore. “We are always on the lookout for anything—including technological tools—that can generate innovation.”
This philosophy led Leditore to explore customizing the EuroMoto Web offering to provide EuroMoto.eu users with interactive tools for reviewing the site’s coverage of motorcycle travel routes. The company wanted to give touring motorcyclists ways to interact with the Web site that made it easy to find and use the information they really wanted, such as the locations of assistance centers and service areas especially designed for motorcyclists.
Leditore was looking for ways to move beyond typical printed and illustrated reports that provided static information about fixed points on fixed maps. It wanted to provide a unique user experience, new ways to interact on multiple levels with graphics, photos, and text. From a single online map, Leditore wanted to offer users opportunities to see route overviews, zoom into detailed stopover or destination maps, find important, timely information about stops and points of interest, and even see actual images of the roads and roadside features at any point in the route.
“We had an overall vision for a tool even better than what travelers have become accustomed to with satellite navigators,” says Giardina. “In essence, we wanted to build a virtual map that travelling motorcyclists could consult on almost any level they needed.”
Solution
Leditore established a Touring section on the EuroMoto.eu Web site, using Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ mapping technology, a component of the Microsoft Windows Live™ network of Internet services. The Touring section provides users with interactive maps, text, and images, including three-dimensional views. Motorcyclists touring Europe can use the interactive maps to review or even create and share navigable motorcycle routes.
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A novel magazine like EuroMoto has to distinguish itself by providing in-depth content and innovative services. With Virtual Earth, we achieved our goal of differentiating ourselves from our competitors. |
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Gianfranco Giardina
Web Division Manager, Leditore |
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Leditore made the decision to launch the Touring section in time for the EICMA 2007 international cycling and motorcycling exhibition. With the exhibition fast approaching, Leditore was faced with a tight development schedule, but was able to make a fast, confident decision to build its mapping solution with Virtual Earth. Leditore has developed a deep relationship with Microsoft, using Microsoft technologies for its server and client environments, and for its Web and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
“We see Microsoft as our natural partner,” says Giardina. “When it was time to choose an advanced mapping solution, we were confident we could go with Microsoft Virtual Earth, without having to evaluate its competitors.”
Leditore chose an internal team of two developers and one graphic designer to develop the mapping application’s content, search engine, and dynamic publication. The development team built a system for interactively exploring European motorcycle itineraries, generated by both the editorial staff and users/readers. Leditore used the Microsoft .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK) to set up the service in just five days, and the beta version of the Touring site appeared on time at the EICMA event in Milan.
Motorcycling enthusiasts can be demanding Web users. They have a strong sense of belonging to the world of motorcycling and are very interested in ad hoc non-generic services dedicated specifically to them. Today, touring motorcyclists can access the EuroMoto.eu Web site and surf through its maps, searching for points of interest to motorcyclists.
EuroMoto.eu users can access several different views of route maps, a road map view, aerial satellite images, and a hybrid view of satellite imagery with an overlay of roads, political boundaries, city and town names, and geographical features. They can zoom to any point on a map, down to the neighborhood level, and see images of an area in both two- and three-dimensional views. By choosing a point on a map to see in the innovative bird’s eye view, users get a perspective that helps them recognize and understand the specific characteristics of a given territory.
A motorcyclist planning a tour within a particular country or across borders can review travel routes suggested by the editorial staff at EuroMoto based on the magazine’s published articles, and even add his or her own comments and information. Registered users can enter their own routes. Because they can access EuroMoto.eu from any computer with an Internet connection, touring motorcyclists can use the interactive mapping application not just to plan upcoming trips, but also to find last-minute information, even en route.
Benefits
By building an online mapping feature with Virtual Earth, Leditore was able to provide its customers with a unique service, tailored specifically to their needs. The touring reports and interactive route maps on EuroMoto.eu are helping Leditore enhance the community identity of its EuroMoto readership, maintain synergy between EuroMoto’s online and printed offerings, and offer a service that is unique in its market.
Enhances Customer/Community Identity
Leditore’s mapping service, developed specifically to meet the needs of travelling motorcyclists, is helping enhance the community identity of the EuroMoto readership. “Our starting point is our readership. Riding a motorcycle is different than driving a car,” says Giardina. “We wanted to provide a feature that would specifically appeal to motorcycle enthusiasts’ strong sense of belonging to a community. In this sense, Virtual Earth opened up a new opportunity to us, providing an ideal tool, at once multifunctional, customizable, and interactive.”
Supports Synergy Between Online and Print Offerings
Readers of EuroMoto can be referred to the mapping feature on EuroMoto.eu from a touring article in the magazine, and they often stay to view and use other parts of the Web site. At the same time, some users come to the mapping feature via links from other travel Web sites or Internet searches for European motorcycle tours. That online traffic generates interest in the magazine’s printed version.
“Our print magazine readers feel at home in the familiar, visually appealing environment on EuroMoto.eu,” says Giardina. “And motorcyclists appreciate how the Touring section lets them share their travel routes with other aficionados in an interactive virtual environment.”
Uses Technology that Integrates with Existing IT Infrastructure
In addition to developing a unique, essential service for its customers, Leditore took advantage of the rich database in Virtual Earth—complete with images—to implement its online mapping solution in only five days, with consequent trouble-free management. Leditore anticipates enhancing the mapping feature on EuroMoto.eu as new functions in Virtual Earth are released.
By using Virtual Earth to build its online mapping solution, the publisher has a technology it can integrate naturally with its existing Microsoft IT infrastructure. “We really don’t want a mixture of platforms and multiple vendors that are difficult to integrate one with the other,” says Giardina. “With Microsoft, we’ve found excellent support and a total synergy with our goals.”
Creates Unique Market Advantage
Leditore used Virtual Earth to build an advanced mapping system on Euromoto.eu that is unique in its market. The opportunity to review, create, share, and navigate travel routes at a variety of levels has made the route-mapping application one of the Web site’s most popular functions. “We were able to use Virtual Earth to set up a tool that is as unique as it is innovative,” says Giardina. “We know of no other sites or portals providing this same service. A novel magazine like EuroMoto has to distinguish itself by providing in-depth content and innovative services. With Virtual Earth, we achieved our goal of differentiating ourselves from our competitors.”
Microsoft Virtual Earth
The Microsoft Virtual Earth platform is an integrated set of services providing quality geospatial data, rich imagery, cutting edge technology, and dependable performance that helps organizations visualize data and provide immersive end-user experiences. With ongoing investments in innovation driven by customer feedback, the Virtual Earth platform continues to offer new map detail and imagery, feature enhancements, and robust platform capabilities.
For more information, visit:
www.microsoft.com/virtualearth
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Leditore products and services, call 39 02 365 88 1 or visit the Web site at:
www.leditore.it
