Project Success Story - Solr & Drupal

Omega Cinema Props maintains and rents a vast inventory of items, such as furniture, lighting and artwork, which are used for set dressing and props for commercials, TV shows and movies. Customers of Omega typically go to one of four warehouse locations to physically review items of interest; at times, customers would use Omega’s website to search and browse inventory, prior to arriving at the physical location. The trend had long been moving towards online browsing of inventory. However, customers indicated that Omega’s site search was difficult to use and was not effective for discovery—a product may be in the inventory but not surfaced by searching, making visits to the warehouse less efficient than desired. Additionally, Omega had an older, HTML website that was difficult to maintain and did not adequately reflect their brand.

The goals of the project were to build and deploy a new website where: 1) Search and navigation was the focal point, 2) the site design was to be simple, clean and intuitive 3) search features such as faceting, sorting, and auto-complete should be provided and 4) the product catalogue was to be “front-and-center” for the user experience.

The solutions to these business challenges were implemented collaboratively, using teams from Omega and Innovent staff. Innovent designed, built, and delivered a new, Drupal website with Solr driven search, along with several value-added features to enhance the end user experience.

The results of the project were that even though Omega's vast inventory is spread among it's large warehouses, customers can now reliably search and view the inventory anywhere, anytime whether it be a desktop, tablet or smartphone. With search powered by Solr, clients have quickly noticed the speed and accuracy of search results. Fast, relevant search, category browsing, along with the new Wish List and other features, have given Omega’s clients a streamlined experience.

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