Tagged Analytics

The Twelve Days of AWS: Redshift

To talk about Redshift we probably need to talk about Data Warehousing, as Redshift is a fully managed Data Warehouse package. This is not putting your data in a ‘digital warehouse’ to go and gather virtual dust on the back of a virtual shelf somewhere and is more akin to a single source of truth for the state of a business and its information. Whilst Redshift is based on PostgreSQL and can be queried with normal SQL, it is not meant to be a DataBase per se.

12 Days of AWS Day 12 written around snowflakes with a penguin wearing a candy cane sweater

The Twelve Days of AWS: Data Pipelines

Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) is the name of the game when it comes to Data Pipelines. 

The Extract portion will acquire data from some source(s), which will then pass through Transform where some alteration may be needed to that data, to then end up Loaded into another storage format, such as Redshift, S3, to name a couple.

12 Days of AWS Day 10 written around snowflakes with two penguins holding balloons

Zicasso

zicasso responsive greece tours screenshot

Zicasso is an innovative travel company with a unique and highly successful business model. Its website matches high-end travel agents with travelers interested in upscale vacations. Zicasso chose Hook 42 to completely redesign and migrate its very outdated Drupal 5 website to Drupal 7.


Design Direction

Beautiful, Luxury, Travel, Image-Rich, Mobile-Friendly, Performant

Key Features

Responsive & Parallax Design, High-Conversion Landing Pages, Rich Media Management, Interactive Messaging, Optimized Business Workflows, Custom Tools & Reports

Summary of Work

We redesigned the Zicasso.com site from scratch to make it more visually appealing and easier for travelers, travel agents, and administrators to use. Zicasso.com received considerable positive press and user comments after the new site launch. Information about the redesign project is available in the Drupal.org case study.

During the discovery phase, we worked closely with the Zicasso team to understand their users, complex workflows, and features to create optimal user flows and wireframes. We evaluated inspirational and competitive sites to craft a modern style guide and compelling visual designs. For administrators, we architected content editing tools and admin interfaces to improve efficiency.

On the technical side, we developed migration code to seamlessly move their very large content base into Drupal 7. We continue to make enhancements on a daily basis to their beautiful and engaging website. The end result is an image-rich, responsive, and interactive website that streamlines the luxury travel planning process.

Responsive image grid highlighting areas of travel on Zicasso's homepage

Newsworthy Design

We collaborated with Zicasso to design and develop beautiful and newsworthy user experiences. Zicasso has been featured in The New York TimesFortuneTravel+Leisure, and many other leading media publications.

Responsive Theming

We craft responsive web pages for Zicasso users to enjoy on their smartphones and tablets.

Content Strategy

We architect Drupal content structures that allow the Zicasso team to reuse pieces of content in smart ways.

Enterprise Drupal Development

We work closely with the Zicasso business team to engineer Enterprise-level tools for streamlined administration and messaging workflows. We continually strive for supporting high performance and reliability, upholding Drupal best practices, and increasing quality assurance.

Digital Asset Management

We enable the Zicasso content team to efficiently leverage thousands of stunning travel photographs by providing customized media tools. We support gigabytes of file attachments for a streamlined messaging workflow.

SEO

We work together with Zicasso's savvy marketing team to optimize the site's web pages for top organic search rankings and provide customized analytics tools for evaluating conversions.

Drupal Migration

We migrated Zicasso's "million node" Drupal 5 website to Drupal 7 as part of a complete site redesign and rearchitecture. Learn about the great migration in the Pantheon + Hook 42 case study.