Project managing classifieds section for Automedia.bg

I have managed this project for three months – from January 2012 until the end of March 2012. Automedia.bg is the largest Auto Media web site in Bulgaria. The web portal consists of articles, categories, galleries, forum and different kind of videos, polls, test drives, and other features. What we missed by the end of 2011 was a section with classifieds where people could browse, look and buy different auto, motor and truck vehicles. In the Automedia strategy – we all (I, OPS dir, CEO and the other directors) approved to initiate, develop and complete this project by the end of the first quarter of 2012. And we were successful - the section is up and running and you could visit it here.

Project scope

The project scope was to: develop classifieds section integrated into Automedia.
The following features had to be implemented:
- Classifieds listings
- Classifieds search – basic and advanced search
- Classifieds pages
- Gallery with pictures for each ad
- Different ad codes to display adverts
- Additional content boxes to be implemented in Automedia

Initiating project phase and design

I and the OPS director negotiated with a partner from Bulgaria to receive the classifieds from their web portal. Also we were successful to negotiate their development team to build the section. On IBG end – we needed to do the designs and the front-end coding, before sending for development. And as usual we started with mock-up of the pages and followed up with a design. I was managing the whole process and was responsible to manage our designers/developers and to communicate with our partners. The design was done but we did not have any available front-end developers so I and the OPS director decided to outsource the front end coding. It was done really well and then I moved the project to our partners do develop it on their own server. I sent them a package containing – the design, the front-end code and specifications to start working.

Development of the section

We have arranged just one meeting to clarify the project features at this point and just after 4 weeks the beta site was done. It was up to me to provide revisions and it took another week to fix some issues before we were ready for a launch. As planned, we needed our system administrators to connect the sub-domain name with the section on the sever of our partners. It took a day to configure this but we managed to meet the deadline and we launched the classifieds section by 27th of March 2012. It was a great success and drove 25% more traffic to Automedia. The visitors found the section very useful and were grateful for it.