VAMPS - Buyers guide

Overview

The buyers guide can be product oriented, company oriented or a mixture of both. The use of structured indexes and searches makes it easy for purchasers to find the companies or products that they are interested in and shortlist them using the member functions.

Indexes

The core of the system is a set of indexes, which are structured in a hierarchy or network. The structure of the indexes is 'soft', and new indexes can be added at any time, and new relationships between indexes can be created at any time. The indexes can contain any of the following: ·

• Products
• Companies
• Links to web sites
• Links to specific job searches
• Links to news searches

This example is about a specific topic (Risk management) and includes links to other related indexes, a brief overview of the subject for those who are unclear what the topic covers, links to the appropriate job pages, bookshop, conference listing, editorial material (in this case a primer) and a list of technology products.

The index is more than just a product listing; it is a mini home page about the specialist topic of risk management.

Featured products

Products can be designated 'featured products' in which case they appear first in the listing, separated from the rest. This focuses visitors attention on those products more effectively than a banner ad, and is therefore a valuable enhancement.

Product indexes

Indexes may be lists of products. Products are placed on indexes by vendors, and products can be placed on more than one index. However limits can be placed on how many indexes a company's products may be placed on, and the default is one per product. An index may be designated as only accepting products from one company type. Thus an index may be set up as a 'events' index that may only have product placed there by companies with a company type 'Event organiser'. This prevents grossly inappropriate placement of products. Companies may be included on product indexes, but they are shown separately and have to be manually placed from the back office.

Company-only indexes

Indexes can be designated as 'company only' and may not contain products, just companies. Such an index will be set up with a single company type that may be placed there. Companies may place themselves on any index for their company type. So recruiters can only place themselves, or move between recruiter indexes. Support staff can place companies on any index on the site irrespective of company type. If this is done, the company can remove themselves from the index or move themselves to an appropriate company-only index. Once they have moved from the index that has been set manually they cannot move themselves back as this must be done by support staff.

Index relationships

The indexes are at many levels, and at any level there may be products at that level, or there may be lower level indexes. For example there may have an industry and geographic structure. So there might be a set of geographic indexes terminating in 'Europe' then under this 'European Finance', European Manufacture' etc. There may also be a set of Industry indexes terminating in say Finance, under which there may be 'European Finance', 'Asian Finance' etc. In this example the 'European Finance' would in both cases be the same index with two alternate routes. The system does not impose a hierarchic structure if this is not appropriate. Of course it will support a hierarchic structure if this is what is required.

Each index links to indexes below and above it in the structure.