clients / case studies / businesses

Ourhouse.com

Goal

Increase online awareness for ACE Hardware customers of ACE's online presence, Ourhouse.com

Solution

A customized onsite Internet kiosk solution

Results

Introduction

OurHouse.com and Ace hardware leadership desired to investigate the implementation of Internet kiosks at retail stores to increase awareness of OurHouse.com, and to increase brand loyalty to Ace Hardware.

The leadership, aware of Ephibian’s kiosk success with Get2Net and Everyday.com kiosk implementations, engaged Ephibian to produce the kiosk aspects of the OurHouse.come software solution.

What did we do?

  • Implemented the first wireless transmission application of Ephibian’s kiosk software
  • Carried out a comprehensive but low cost proof of concept within several ACE hardware stores prior to implementation
  • Increased visibility of both ACE Hardware and OurHouse.com’s online presence
  • Created a method by which the effectiveness of a retail store-based kiosk solution could be measured and analyzed to increase online sales and customer loyalty
  • Tailored content to the retail store audience

How did we do it?

  • Worked closely with the wireless provider (Hughes) to ensure communication was seamless, responsive and that the operations center could track issues relative to network outages distinct from software issues
  • Worked closely with the OurHouse server-side website development staff to tailor the content to the Retail Store audience
  • Developed a customizable “sleep mode” capability which could be set at Store level
  • The proof-of-concept, deployed to eight locations, monitored and measured for its business benefits over a six month period, included:
    • Banner & Screensaver Ad Serving and Rotation and URL filtering
    • Database-backed Session Tracking (for business metrics) and Session Timing
    • Session “Clean-up”
    • Inactivity Timeouts and a Nightly Sleep Mode
    • Computer Security, including Reboot Security
    • Remote Diagnostics and Remote Reboot Capability, including SNMP Support
    • Remote Software Update Capability; Credit Card and Printing Subsystems
    • Secure, tamper-proof Internet kiosks
    • Rapid responsiveness over wireless communications
    • Usage and demographic profiling for Business analysis
    • Java software built atop the Linux operating system had excellent stability
    • Using Intel-based hardware architecture to keep kiosk costs low
    • Free sponsored sessions or pay-for-use capabilities