Get the Most out of your Web Developer

When you are trying to get every ounce out of your marketing dollar and decrease your costs – knowing how to work more effectively with your web developer can help you decrease cost and improve your product.

1. Bundle your Requests.

When you ask for changes to your website, gather all your changes and send them over — all at once.  Sending bundled requests will save you time (1 email instead of 5 emails), decrease the likelihood of a request getting lost, and speed up the time it takes to make changes. In order to bundle requests you usually have to gather them over a couple weeks – this gives you time to think about them, and decide if they are essential and truly in line with your website goals.

2. Prioritize your Requests.

Everything can’t be done at once – no matter how fast the developer.  If you are on a budget, prioritizing your requests will also help you decide what changes are essential to your business.

3. Insist on a System to Track Requests.

If your web developer does not have a system to track requests (spreadsheet, project management software, or bug tracking software) or a consistent process for making changes – things will get lost,  items will be done incorrectly, and communication wil get fuzzy. Bad communication increases costs.

4. Take the Time to Test.

Test what your developer is changing for you – or better yet have someone who isn’t making the request test it.

I am always amazed at the clients who approve the changes but never really go try them out. Even the best developers miss something every once an a while. Having to go back and fix something weeks or months later will cost you valuable time and sometimes money.

5. Take a Screenshot.

I recommend Evernote for screen captures (Evernote will even let your draw on the screenshot). Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words (or dollars). Why would you make a request, and then pay your developer to figure out exactly what you were taking about – or hunt for exactly where that detail is on your website?

Creating thoughtful and specific communications, and having a clear procedure for rquesting, testing and approving changes, will help you get things done faster. You will get you exactly what you want, and improve your bottom line. And your vendor must be eager and able to reciprocate with efficient communications! If they aren’t, well… maybe it’s time for a new vendor.

Projects and Launches, Launches and Projects

We’re busy as bees here at Trinity Applied Internet.  It’s all we can do to login and give you an update now and then. Here’s the short version:

Recent Launches

www.tmcworkingsolutions.org — A hardworking, non-profit microlender in the Bay Area, TMC Working Solutions needed a more professional look and a much more robust content management system.  Content Gadget and a simple CSS template did the trick.

www.kps3.com — Our long time agency partners, KPS|3 Marketing, have completely revamped their website, incorporating some whimsical Flash (created by 9MM Media), tons of great content, multimedia elements, and our very own Content Gadget.  Their blog is really outstanding, too.

Coming Soon

Trinity Applied Internet — It isn’t just a rumor, we have a new site on the way.  Our problem is, we keep focusing on our clients’ work while our own is relegated to the back burner.   We suppose that’s certainly not a problem from our clients’ perspective (in fact we call that “by design”) — so we don’t apologize.

Reynolds National Center for Courts and Media — On the heels of the UNR Reynolds School of Journalism, its sister organization will be unveiling their new site this month. We loved the name of their last conference, by the way: “FYI, LOL or OMG? – Technology’s Impact on the Courts and Media”

Server Technology — This locally based company is a global leader in manufacturing power distribution management equipment, and their home page redesign is going to reflect their success, stature and service.

Exciting New Starts

We are proud to announce that Trinity Applied Internet has been contracted by Gnomon, Inc. to fulfill the graphic design and custom Joomla/Google Maps components for a new State Historic Preservation Office site.  Watch this space for more information on a really fun project that promotes historical tourism here in our Silver State.

Estipona Group has selected Trinity Applied Internet to build the new Arts 4 Nevada website, incorporating their vibrant and expansive new design with Content Gadget and custom calendar management, e-mail push, and other database-driven applications.

Buzz you later –

Keith and Erin

Announcing the Redesigned Reynolds School of Journalism Website

Today marks the public launch of the Reynolds School of Journalism’s newly redesigned website.  Trinity Applied Internet has been working with RSJ over the course of almost a year — to define goals and requirements, to imagine and design online applications to make department operations easier, and to incorporate multimedia and cutting-edge publishing technology to feature student and faculty work.  Suffice to say, we are proud of this work.

The graphic design was provided by the Estipona Group, and numerous members of the faculty provided strategy, review, and feedback along the way.  This project also owes a special thank-you to Professor Donica Mensing, who managed the complete refresh of all their content and populated data into all the new applications.

The website features our Content Gadget content management system, and five substantial custom database applications that manage everything from News and Events, to Faculty Pages, Scholarship Applications and the semester Course Schedule.  Prospective Students, Undergraduates, Graduate Students, Alumni and Parents each have sections of content organized and tailored directly to them.  Perhaps most importantly, the School has ample area on the site to publish student work.  The development was crafted to allow for fluid expansion and to be completely supported by staff members.

Projects like these don’t happen without a great committee. Trinity Applied Internet would like to express our sincere appreciation to everyone at the Reynolds School, including Dean Jerry Ceppos, Director of Alumni Relations Kristin Ghiggeri-Burgarello, and Professors Rosemary McCarthy, Bob Felten, Larry Dailey, Donica Mensing and Howard Goldbaum.   The committee was a pleasure to work with, and we wish them the best as they roll into 2009 with a new online presence.

Nevada Humanities Adopts Content Gadget to Manage Their Website

Trinity Applied Internet recently had the honor of working with an organization that qualifies as a state treasure.  Nevada Humanities is the non-profit organization that has been bringing Chautauqua to the Truckee Meadows, and now southern Nevada as well, for more than 15 years. With seven core  programs and a substantial annual grant-making commitment, Nevada Humanities has been a part of hundreds of state events and initiatives in the humanities, arts, culture and history disciplines.  In fact, they are also the sponsoring organization and editorial body for the Online Nevada Encyclopedia, which features some of the most interesting Nevada lore and images on the web today. (Check out the “Vegas Then and Now” interactive feature.  We hear there may be some Reno/Sparks images up there soon!)

The organization makes very good use of a small number of staff, so manually updating their comprehensive website content in HTML was at best time-prohibitive, and at worst, a real pain.  Board member Edward Estipona had already provided them with a solid visual design, but keeping up with the large volume of information, applications, forms and documents, events, and new video and other media, was becoming very difficult.  Trinity Applied Internet took the existing site design and wrapped it around our Content Gadget content management system, installing tools that would allow their staff to manage documents, publish events, and even load photography into their jQuery banner, all from a secure online administrative interface.

We hope Nevada Humanities is as happy with their new website engine as we were to be working with such an esteemed organization.  Thank you, Nevada Humanities!

Announcing PDUsdirect.com

Trinity Applied Internet is proud to announce today’s launch of PDUsdirect.com.  The website is an e-commerce solution for Server Technology, a global supplier of power distribution and management equipment for data centers, headquartered in Reno.  PDU’s Direct is the first TAI-developed website to utilize a new, customized Ruby on Rails content management system, and features a robust database solution that manages a bounty of technical product information with simplicity and ease.  The site also sports online chat support, merchant gateway, shipping calculations, a custom Ruby shopping cart, and quite a few other internal bells and whistles.

TAI is excited to have been given the opportunity to develop this project for Server Technology, a company which also has been honored this week with the first Northern Nevada Technology Company of the Year Award given by NCET.   Congratulations, Server Technology, and cheers — here’s to a great response and a healthy return on investment from PDUsdirect.com!

Content Gadget 2.5 Arrives

Trinity Applied Internet has been working hard on a little gem we call Content Gadget.  (That’s the database driven application that allows a client to maintain their website content, images, user data, meta-information and keywords from their own web interface.)  While most of our clients require quite a bit of customization, we have been working on developing a standard platform that will be a solid solution for many websites.  Well, ta da! We are one giant leap closer to that with what we are calling version 2.5. (And really not that far away from 3.0 — which to us, is really exciting.)

After hearing feedback from users of content management systems as diverse as Content Gadget, Joomla!, and DotNetNuke, Keith had a ton of ideas brewing around how to make the system as easy as possible to use.   His primary concern was building all the different components (modules, tools) to be utilized intuitively.  All the elements use the same vocabulary of drop down menus and fillable fields in order to make the users’ experience consistent throughout the system.

This is especially important for those clients who also have heavy-duty applications that have been custom-built for their site.  A client could have a lot to deal with, between managing the content, culling and responding to lead gen data, and maintaining special business applications such as password protected white-papers and financial reporting.  We feel you should not have to be a qualified DBA or other IT professional to maintain and utilize your website, so we’re making it as simple and elegant as possible to learn the system.  Clients without all the custom applications should find the changes make their administration even easier.

If you have questions, ideas or comments about your CMS, give us a call.

Trinity Applied Internet Launches Nevada Immunization Coalitions Website

Ta Da!  This past September, Trinity Applied Internet completed the redesign for the Nevada Immunization Coalitions website — www.immunizenevada.org.  The launch happened to coincide with a very busy time of year for NIC, the start of the traditional school term and beginning of flu shot season.

ImmunizeNevada.org features the new version of our Content Gadget content management system. (2.0), as well as a suite of custom tools that operate News, Events, Newsletters and Publications, among other items. The organization, which provides education, resources and advocacy about immunzations for patients and medical professionals, has been working with Trinity Applied Internet since 2005.

Extra kudos are due to NIC for establishing their own Facebook page and joining the social networking community. To join their Facebook group and help provide awareness and consistent immunizations for Nevada children and adults, visit the www.immunizenevada.org website and click through the Facebook link on the right hand side.

Trinity Applied Internet’s New Website is Coming Soon

Fact: when you are a small business, there never seems to be enough time to get to everything.

Well, that’s probably true no matter how big you are.

Suffice to say, we are going to be sporting a new look to the www.trinity-ai.com very soon.  The redesign will shine us up, feature some of our new Content Gadget tools, and better reflect the philosophy and quality of our work.

We’ll keep you posted.

Download our NCET Flyer

Didn’t have time to stop by and grab a flyer?? Get your full-color copy right here.

And, here’s the link to the beginning of our “do-it-yourself” tutorial, for those of you who we referred to the site.

Meet us at the NCET Entrepreneur Expo…

…Reno Sparks Convention Center, Saturday 3/15. We’ll be exhibiting and attending as many of the breakout sessions as we can fit in. Check us out if you’re in the market for a site or have questions on how to create a “do-it-yourself” online presence.