June 2010
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New & improved – it’s www.oomphgroup.com V3! |
Jun 16, 2010 10:05 PM
Johanna Hoffmann |
After a few intense months of researching and exploring graphic platforms and content strategies, of working with designers and of transferring and reformatting mountains of content, we are finally ready to welcome visitors back to the new www.oomphgoup.com!
The redesign of our website has been a long and time-consuming process, but one that makes for an interesting story, because it vividly illustrates how companies must adapt their online presence today to stay apace of the vast changes that have swept the Internet in the past couple of years.
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Our first site, launched in late 2006, was a standard HTML website. To get it done, we retained a graphic designer for the interface design and a web designer to code the site and get us up and running on the Internet. When the site went live it was a hit; the colours and the graphic elements resonated with our target markets and the site gave us instant credibility.
The HTML site’s lifespan was very brief however. It quickly became apparent that directing a web designer to update the content was very time-consuming and expensive; we would need a different approach. Luckily, at that moment we were introduced to Your Web Department, an innovative start up with a unique ‘content management system’ that would allow us to make all the changes ourselves.
To say that YWD changed our work life is not an exaggeration. We could not have developed and marketed our company the way we did without the ability to quickly add pages, sections, copy, widgets and forms and without YWD’s built-in SEO tools to optimize the site and help us grow our web traffic. The pay-off for being in control of our site has been incalculable: not only have we saved a lot of money, but being able to test and tweak content according to response and traffic has enabled us to adapt to Internet changes and trends while learning important 21st century marketing skills.
Fresh content brought a new challenge however: as the volume increased and the way in which we used the site evolved, the graphic design and the site’s layout began to get in the way. The colours, figures and content made for a cluttered interface: instead of attracting and retaining visitors, the rich content we had spent so much time developing was having the opposite effect: people would land, become overwhelmed and leave.
It became clear we would have to redesign the site. Being ‘educated consumers’, this time around we approached the exercise in a completely different way. Instead of starting with the graphic platform, we asked Your Web Department’s CEO Paul Chato to help us create a system for organizing the content in a simpler, more intuitive manner that would allow us to ‘flatten’ the site and cut out sub-pages.
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Once an infrastructure and ‘wireframe’ were developed, Flavio Mester, YWD’s creative director, developed a graphic concept that retained our lively colours but that is based on an interface that is simple and lets the content stand out.
The results have been phenomenal: our workshops are now much more prominent and traffic in those pages has gone up; the vast amount of rich content we have collected is now much more apparent and more easily accessible; the ‘stickiness’ of the site has improved tremendously: many more people stay after landing and visit duration has gone up: the average visit time is now 5:15 minutes – not bad for a non-media site…And last, but not least, the number of people who are inquiring about our services has gone up and who landing on the site and sign up for workshops has gone way up!
What do you think of our new website? Do you find it easier to find and read content? Do you have any suggestions? Let us know! We want visitors to really enjoy their experience and are happy to look at suggestions to improve the site. |
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Life @ Oomph,
Marketing,
Practice Tools
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SurveyGizmo - Online Survey Tool |
Jun 10, 2010 4:29 PM
Johanna Hoffmann |
SurveyGizmo is an online survey tool which allows you to easily conduct simple and complex surveys, evaluations, polls and HR studies. This web-based software is very user-friendly as you can create online surveys, polls or website forms in minutes. SurveyGizmo allows you to ask over 20 different types of questions: from textboxes, dropdown menus, radio button to captchas (type words from an image), you will be able to ask whatever you want. There are also a lot of options for customizing questions like text formatting, word size and number limits, various textbox or table properties, options for question numbering, as well as options for customizing the templates to match your corporate branding.
Other handy features include:
- Options for distribution of surveys like links to your surveys in e-mails or embedded directly on your website (JavaScript, iFrame, HTML). The system offers integration with MailChimp. For users who do not use MailChimp, SurveyGizmo allows survey invitations to be through e-mails (the number of e-mails you can send depends on the plan you are on).
- Protection against duplicate votes.
- Easy report generation that allows you to convert your data into graphs and averages and export results into CSV, PDF and SPSS files.
- Social media integration that makes it easy to announce and publish links to your surveys on your Facebook wall and as Twitter updates.
 The company offers 4 different plans beginning at $19/month with the ‘Personal’ plan with which you get 1 user account, 1,000 responses and e-mails per month and the ‘Basic Logic’ options. The most popular is the ‘Pro’ plan at $49/month which includes 1 user account, 5,000 responses and e-mails per month and the ‘Advanced Logic’ options. Bigger companies might be more interested in the ‘Enterprise’ plan at $159/month which includes 10 users account, 50,000 responses and e-mails and the ‘Advanced Report’ options’ or by the ‘Dedicated’ plan for $599/month which includes 40 user accounts, 1,000,000 responses and 100,000 e-mails per month plus all the ‘Account Manager’ options.
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Business Tools,
Marketing,
Practice Tools
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ConnectWise - PSA Software |
Jun 8, 2010 4:22 PM
Johanna Hoffmann |
ConnectWise is a Professional Service Automation (PSA) software for the IT services industry. It combines help desk, dispatching, service level management, project management and CRM into a single, web based application, with integrated time-tracking, billing and reporting.
The software has 5 main sections:
- the sales force automation section which includes a CRM software, a marketing manager for marketing campaigns, sales opportunity management, a sales forecasting software, purchasing and receiving.
- a capture, plan and schedule section including service ticketing, a project management scheduling software, a dispatch and scheduling software, a time management software, clients reports and a client portal.
- a service management software which features a configuration management module, a managed services software, a dispatch management module, MSP (Managed Service Platform) agreements, SLA (Service Level Agreements) management and a help desk software.
- a track, approve and invoice section which has a time and billing management software, a time billing software, a RMA (?) tracking module, a service workflow automation module, an inventory, a response and resolution tracker.
- an analyze and report section which includes a performance manager, a utilization and realization module, a knowledge management module and standards reports.
ConnectWise offers a 120-day free trial. Prices available on request only. |
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Practice Management,
Practice Tools
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Clicktime - Time Tracking |
Jun 3, 2010 4:20 PM
Johanna Hoffmann |
 Clicktime is a time tracking and management software that offers many user-friendly features.
It allows employees to track their time on different projects as well as expenses. The Estimate Comparison Report enables managers to compare the estimated time of a client file or project to the actual time spent. Tracking down unfinished timesheets is also easier thanks to a color-coded dashboard that points out who hasn’t completed their timesheet. Users can also export the data from Clicktime to any accounting, HR or payroll system.
The prices begin at $10/user/month with a ‘Basic’ plan that includes daily and automatic backup of data, 40+ reports, customizable data export, report builder, notifications by email for incomplete timesheets, flexible security for users and managers, mobile web access from handheld devices, desktop application for offline access, free email support, free phone support [U.S. and Canada only] and data export capability. You can also get optional modules like timesheets approvals, expenses tracking, time-off module, audit trail/DCAA compliance and advanced job estimation for $2/month for each module. Other fees include: a $60startup fee, a $49 startup fee for each optional module. The ‘Corporate’ plan is $12/user/month and has the same features and same optional modules as the ‘Basic’ plan as well as the following options: Access to Divisions, Associate tasks with jobs, Restrict jobs/projects by division or employee, Customizable Employment Types, Variable session timeout settings, Custom Messages and Alerts, Priority technical response, High-speed report server and Data import capability.
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Business Tools,
Practice Management,
Practice Tools,
Time Management
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Box.net - Simple Online Collaboration |
Jun 1, 2010 3:09 PM
Johanna Hoffmann |
Box.net is an online storage service that allows you to upload, organize, store, manage and access your files from anywhere. Box.net has grown in popularity due to the outstanding set of features it offers. These include:
- Excellent project management tools that allows you to share files with colleagues and make notes and comments in a handy discussion feature.
- A robust content search makes it easy to look for specific documents.
- Desktop synchronization that automatically ‘synchs’ files on your desktop with files uploaded to the system.Mobile integration: can access Box.net from your smart phone; Iphone and Ipad owners can preview documents, make comments and more.
- Security: One of the priorities of the company is to ensure security of the files stored on their platform. To this end, you can set passwords, expiration dates for files and control folder access. Additional security features are available with the Box Business edition.
They offer different plans: the ‘Lite’ plan includes file sharing [1GB of file storage with a 25MB size file limit] and smart phone access. The ‘Individual’ plan includes the expanded file sharing [10GB of file storage with a 1GB size file limit + password protected files and faster uploads] as well as the mobile application. For corporate users, the Box Business edition, which is priced at $15/user/month, [15GB of file storage per user with a 2GB size limit file] includes expanded file sharing, enhanced collaboration with full-text search option, download stats, document tracking, desktop file synchronization and integration with Google apps. If you want a bigger plan, the ‘Enterprise’ plan might be what you are looking for as it includes all the options of the ‘Business’ plan plus the secure and scalable content management [encrypted storage transfer, full custom branding, role-based access control] as well as Salesforce.com integration and dedicated support. The price of this plan is only available on request. |
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Business Tools,
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Practice Tools
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