1 million euro website revamp for Lotto.ie

mick.fr

Agency (www.agency.com) has been awarded the revamp/hosting/CRM solution contract for lotto.ie/lottery.ie

This is a 1 million contract over 3 years

Not bad :-)

AARRRGH

I always find it mad how much companies pay for websites...

Bob the Builder

I wouldn't mind getting 1million for designing a website. tbh, I didn't like the website that was there already. I suppose the National Lottery are willing to pay whatever they have to for a solution which is really secure.

Orion

Secure for what? It's not like they accept cc payments is it - it's purely an information site. Crazy money. I'd do it for 900k

Goodshape

Macros42 wrote: »

Secure for what? It's not like they accept cc payments is it - it's purely an information site.

I'm not too familiar with the current site (come to think of it, I've never actually done the Lotto) but for 1million I'd expect that they're planning some sort of major overhaul. Play Lotto online or somesuch thing. That would need to be fairly secure alright.

Still... yeah... crazy money.

AARRRGH

An information website? For 1 million...?

Tinfoil hat: do one of the Lotto directors own agency.com?

aidan_walsh

dublindude wrote: »

An information website? For 1 million...?

Tinfoil hat: do one of the Lotto directors own agency.com?

Its an information website now, we don't know what it will be after they revamp.

jhegarty

Macros42 wrote: »

Secure for what? It's not like they accept cc payments is it - it's purely an information site. Crazy money. I'd do it for 900k

I'd do it for 800k

ps. i need to outsource an informational site for €200 ... anyone ?

Bob the Builder

mick.fr wrote: »

Agency (www.agency.com) has been awarded the revamp/hosting/CRM solution contract for lotto.ie/lottery.ie

This is a 1 million contract over 3 years

Not bad :-)

When I say secure, I mean that they will probably be storing thier information about clients etc, on a CRM. Also, some crackpot will want to hack Lotto.ie just for the craic or to prove a point.

Winters

I have no doubt the new lotto site will do what the uk lotto allows and let people to paly online using secure payments from Visa/Mastercard/Laser etc.

For a million over 3 years I would imagine it is a lot more than just a revamp and update of the current site. I would imagine there is a large content management and online payments system on an extranet and furthermore on the intranet.

Also, if the company is doing hosting .... well, they can charge silly amounts. Design/Dev companies usually do. Its a handy way to keep getting income

is_that_so

Like all of these big contracts it would have to go out to EU tender. I suspect there's probably a whole Intranet/CRM/CMS deal behind it. It's the kind of juicy thing that has guys in suits for months on end watching and asking questions, so many questions .............
And of course it's not just a website , it's "a portal".

mick.fr

Here is what the job is about exactly


The National Lottery have awarded a contract for a Website Design, Development and Hosting Project requiring the following services:

(1)Long term strategy planning - Assisting the National Lottery in the development of its long term digital strategy.

(2)Technical consultancy - Providing advice on all capacity and technical requirements to enable the optimum website for the National Lottery taking into account ongoing updating through game innovation.

(3)Design consultancy - Designing a best in class website that provides a platform for consumers to access and play online games as well as being updated on lottery results, events, advertising, sponsorship etc.

(4)Accessibility and usability consultancy - Allowing the National Lottery to access the widest possible user base of potential players.

(5)Content Management - Providing content that both updates users on Lottery results and new games but also entertains and engages consumers online.

(6)Campaign Planning - Devising and implementing an online marketing strategy for the National Lottery.

(7)Customer Relationship Management Programme - Devising and implementing a CRM strategy that enables the National Lottery to build, manage, maintain and utilize an optimum customer database.

(8)Traffic Analysis - Providing ongoing measurements of traffic through The National Lottery website and tracking site performance with key audiences and evaluating return on investment.

(9)Operational and Disaster Recovery - providing a capability to ensure continuous user access to the primary website in the event of technical problems and operational downtime.

When you think about it, 1 million over 3 years is not that much. 300k a year to pay at least 2-3 guys + hosting (Several dedicated servers).
I would say the agency is actually going to struggle.

Gordon

jhegarty wrote: »

I'd do it for 800k

ps. i need to outsource an informational site for €200 ... anyone ?

200k? Sure. I can make it in htm or html portal version, whichever one you wish. I can even make it with a background colour of your choice, if that tickles your fancy.

I must say though, agency.coms site has some great presentations of their portfolio.

is_that_so

That's a very big project and any part of it could screw the whole thing up. €1 million isn't that bad and it would be quite a challenge.

zardette

To make an appropriate judgment on the cost of doing the site one would need information on what new services the site will be providing ...

For example will the re-vamp site include more interactive games on line will it be open to the whole of the EU ( mutilanguage) ....

How can one make a quote without a full specification of the job ?

Yes one can agree to do it for x amount of euro but it might not be a bad idea first to get information on the type of work that is invloved first

So once we know what involved in the site maybe one can make a judgement that a million euros over 3 years is "good value for money".

Z

flamegrill

nevf wrote: »

When I say secure, I mean that they will probably be storing thier information about clients etc, on a CRM. Also, some crackpot will want to hack Lotto.ie just for the craic or to prove a point.

Again?

MOD(galway)

no offence it does'nt even look that great.. lol

mick.fr

MOD(galway) wrote: »

no offence it does'nt even look that great.. lol

What?
The current one ? No of course this is still the old one. They got the contract awarded recently.

Laslo

I suppose all we can do is reserve judgment until the site's launched.

Bob the Builder

It would want to be a nice website for one that cost €1,000,000. And it would want to be able to do some nifty tricks.

Draupnir

Looking at their portfolio, it's going to be Flash, which means its going to be shìt. However, 1 million over three years is reasonably considering the details of the contract and the amount of potential traffic.

democrates

What's there is good in some ways but really poor in others.

How hard would it be to throw together an rss feed of results and a 'link to source' syndication policy so portals can automatically update? That's an easy win right there.

There seems to be a policy of replacing ocr machines with quick-pick only, that must already be driving off people who play a standard set of numbers, I wonder how many regulars they lose each time the game changes.

An online facility could make playing a standard ticket so convenient you'd just forget about it. Changing from physical ticket as proof, to a 'your account' system would take some work, but if paddy power can do it...

Zascar

That is a serious amount of money for a site. My guess is that they have a massive oracle database at the back with all the options for performance, security and reporting, and then CRM etc built in. That would cost several hundred thousand for the software licences alone

Placebo

for the requirements they are asking for , 1 million over 3 years isnt that great, its not a one man job at all.

CoNfOuNd

I remember seeing this when it went out to tender. The tender includes online games, accessibility, traffic analysis, disaster recovery etc.

The details are at:
http://www.etenders.gov.ie/Search/Search_Switch.aspx?ID=58212

I don't think 1 million euro is too much for the amount of work they are looking.

mick.fr

Zascar wrote: »

That is a serious amount of money for a site. My guess is that they have a massive oracle database at the back with all the options for performance, security and reporting, and then CRM etc built in. That would cost several hundred thousand for the software licences alone

Be reasonable for a sec. If they were going o use Oracle, that would be a lot more expensive than a Mil over 3 years

podgeandrodge

can they not just do a deal with the uk lottery and copy their website - surely the basic workings must be similar and this would work out cheaper?


http://www.national-lottery.co.uk

heggie

why bring up such an old thread? and why do that? should irish companies support irish business where appropriate, we'd have nothing built if everyone had that attitude

podgeandrodge

heggie wrote: »

why bring up such an old thread? and why do that? should irish companies support irish business where appropriate, we'd have nothing built if everyone had that attitude

Because I heard recently that there was a change on the way for the Irish lottery website and came across this thread.

There is nothing wrong with bringing up "such an old thread" (January 08) if I choose to do so.

So you feel Irish companies should support Irish business - fine, but it doesn't mean my argument is not a valid one. It is, after all, our money that funds the lottery.

As for "having nothing built if everyone had that attitude" - we might have a few better websites given the quality of a lot of Irish websites compared to their UK counterparts.


edit: just noticed that this thread is on a web development forum so I can understand the reaction to a degree!

Sully

podgeandrodge wrote: »

There is nothing wrong with bringing up "such an old thread" (January 08) if I choose to do so.

Actually, there is. Its up to the moderators of the forum, but its normally frowned upon by people on Boards (including me) when people bump a topic and add nothing useful.

Drags on with ****e responses like mine then

turgon

The same company did dulux.co.uk, and apparently they have 8 offices around the world. I would imagine we will all be able to satisfy our urge to win €18 million online from the comfort of our home in future.

On another note what really annoys me on the Dulux site is that thing down the right hand side that stays on the screen if you scroll down. When are people going to realize it can be done with like one line of css and doesnt bob up and down like the stupid Javascript one does?

PixelTrawler

Please post that line of css... be mighy handy for a site im doing... or if you have a link to sample on line that would do nicely

Cheers

NullZer0

Macros42 wrote: »

Secure for what? It's not like they accept cc payments is it - it's purely an information site. Crazy money. I'd do it for 900k

+1

IMO they could of hired alot better for less!

The Mighty Ken

To be fair, unless any of you know the exact particulars and specifics of the job at hand, I'd be inclined to reserve judgement. I suspect that this isn't just a case of 'building de webs' as opposed to a very involved project with integration into legacy systems, a lot of money being invested in security and a great deal of niche knowledge required for certain aspects of the job. The fact is, we just don't know without seeing a detailed requirements document.

Eoin

Solyad wrote: »

Please post that line of css... be mighy handy for a site im doing... or if you have a link to sample on line that would do nicely

Cheers

I think it's "position: fixed", but IE doesn't support it very well.

aphex™

Well lads the new site is up www.lotto.ie

Not a hint of any e-commerce either :eek::eek::eek:



All i can say is :o

Webmonkey

If that site cost a million then the world has gone crazy

philtaylor

That can't be it. No E-Commerce. 1 million quid is the world gone mad.

philtaylor

Ok I think I am in the wrong business. Anyone looking for a partner is web design firm. I am an expert in government tenders but if this is the final product, this really shocks me.

Webmonkey

the SEO links are very unprofessional

http://www.lotto.ie/en/Winners1/
http://www.lotto.ie/en/Games-NEW/

CoNfOuNd

turgon wrote:

I would imagine we will all be able to satisfy our urge to win €18 million online from the comfort of our home in future

Heh - not from the new lotto.ie!

You have to remember that although it has a 1 million euro price tag, it is a 3 year project. However, it's still amazing that there is no online gaming!

http://www.spiralhosting.com/blog/2008/08/new-website-for-irish-national-lottery/

EKRIUQ

How hard can it be to do e-commerence online, here's a company that looks after most of the gaa clubs and societys, organisations

www.helpourclub.ie

The websites a huge improvment but for 1,000,000 yoyo's its not much, any designer/developer with 3 years of time could come up with that for a fraction of the cost.

Its not rip off Ireland just people without a clue making decisions

Sully

Namesco wrote: »

How hard can it be to do e-commerence online, here's a company that looks after most of the gaa clubs and societys, organisations

www.helpourclub.ie

The websites a huge improvment but for 1,000,000 yoyo's its not much, any designer/developer with 3 years of time could come up with that for a fraction of the cost.

Its not rip off Ireland just people without a clue making decisions

Christ they paid that amount for that? Truly awful work for that kinda money.

cgarvey

Went to have a look, but was just getting 500 errors ("Page could not be loaded"). Ah well. Maybe they're bringing the rest of the features live now

yeraulone

http://www.lotto.ie/Good-Causes/maps/

they don't even have a google maps key

miju

eh how the fook was €1 million paid for that site? It's just a standard db driven CMS . I thought with that price tag there was gonna be online gaming facilities and such.

Honest to god I could have knocked up that site in one day it's woeful

kjt

That's quite a horrible new site!

democrates

kjt wrote: »

That's quite a horrible new site!

Yep, and ott on the javascript for my tastes.

Prizes and results without js - calendar display disappears, and there's no submit facility though the year and month selectors display. Also the data only seem to go back to September 1994 though the year selector goes back to 1988.

I think they need to completely rethink their approach to making results data available, from a marketing perspective the terms and conditions seem retrograde. They seem to be going by a portal mentality, get people to the site and keep them there, bar anyone else from showing results without prior agreement and make it awkward to access the data other than manually, that's the opposite to what their policy should be.

The goal of their site should not be becoming a popular destination, but to make customers lotto experience better and increase visibility. Make results data available via rss, make it so that every draw result has it's own url. Provide a code snippet so that people can include the latest results on their site/blog etc with a link back to lotto.ie.

I can't believe how stupid they are being.

Flashus

my 4 yr old couldhave designed a better one

Jackz

And it's fecked. The site is not able to handle the The Millionaire Raffle result being displayed.

miju

hah just saw that there. that is quite frankly utterly pathetic