California Triumph / California BMW: Website Design, Production, and Website Maintenance Service

Project Scope

www.caltriumph.com, www.calbmw.com
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California BMW was founded in 1981 by BMW riders. California Triumph became one of the first franchised Bay Area Triumph dealers in 1995 and has been one of Triumph's top American dealers ever since. California BMW and California Triumph are divisions of California BMW Triumph Motorcycles (new window opens).

The original sites used framesets with non-standard HTML markup. The client wished to update the code, remove the framed structure and freshen the design. Key design goals included:

Easy and efficient maintenance
De-frame and implement CSS-driven separation of layout and content for optimized search engine indexing
Reorganize file system structure and reintegrate content
"Open up" homepage to more prominently feature new bikes and specials
Update HTML code to be standards-based

Website Design Solution and Implementation

Collaborint redesigned brochure websites for California Triumph and California BMW using standards-based XHTML markup. Frames were eliminated and a one-template-design, using server-side includes, was introduced for easy maintenance; main navigation and other common elements, such as footers and logos, are now updated, site-wide, by making edits to a single file.

The original, flat architecture was completely reorganized in order to keep the websites orderly over the long-term.

The redesigned, two-column homepage now provides ample room for showcasing bikes as well as featuring links to news, events, and other useful information. Since both websites are primarily brochure sites for presentation of new motorcycles, nearly 50% of home page has been allocated for this purpose.

Project Accomplishments

Primary website design and production accomplishments include:

Faster loading web pages, especially for dial-up users
Facilitation of search engine indexing of the website content (SEO)
Site-wide changes accomplished in minutes due to extensive use of CSS combined with a single template design and server-side includes
Standards-based XHTML 1.0 Transitional
WCAG Level A conformance

Ongoing Website Maintenance Service

Both CAL websites are maintained using Collaborint's Website Maintenance service.