Usability Dynamics by Catalina Barrero

Usability Dynamics: A Creative Web Development Agency An Introduction to our company, methods, staff and works.

“I have been in Internet development for almost 20 years. When a high profile client needed a very customized web site, I put the project out to bid and half of the developers I interviewed said that what I really needed was the team at Usability Dynamics. Usability Dynamics built two web sites for us from scratch. These weren’t just sites, they were more like web applications that required nights of extensive coding and troubleshooting. Everyone on the team did whatever it took to make sure we produced a quality product on time and on budget. I can’t tell you the million ways the Usability Dynamics team went WAY ABOVE AND BEYOND what other development teams have done. As a result, our traffic has increased six fold, we’ve moved from page 20 to page 1 of Google and our leads have increased 300 times (and rising) what they were before we started. I plan to use them again and again.”

- Don Lipper, Owner, Write the First Time

Contents Introduction - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Services Overview - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Skills and Expertise - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Quality Assurance - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Technology & Systems - - - - - - - - - - Cited Projects - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - WP-Property - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - eInstruction.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - WP-Invoice - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SeeJoeRock.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Anime Expo - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Tandem Properties, Inc. - - - - - - - - - - North East Louisiana Tea Party - - Saint Olaf Catholic Church - - - - - - Capital Deals - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - StinkBall Fantasy Football - - - - - - - Letter from the President - - - - - - - -

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UsabilityDynamics.com

Introduction

Usability Dynamics, Inc. (UD) Is an American web development company formed in 2011 through the merger of two existing companies, TwinCitiesTech.com, Inc. and JBRWeb Consulting, LLC. Founding partners and former Marines, Andy Potanin and Reid Williams, operate with the greatest integrity, bringing the highest levels of reliability, honesty, and commitment to their projects. Their outstanding work ethic, combined with a proven history of successful project management and delivery of quality products, makes for a management team that’s hard to beat.

Co-founder Andy Potanin, as acting President of UD, puts his focused business education and well-rounded technical background to excellent use by expertly translating true business needs into seamlessly functional technical implementations. With a degree in IT Management from Campbell University, Andy is currently pursuing his MBA from Webster University with a focus on Procurement and Acquisitions. Co-founder Reid Williams, is the UD Technical Project Manager. As a classically educated systems integrator, trained systems and network administrator, and a selftaught web application developer, Reid possesses an impressive portfolio of work covering all facets of information technology.

He is currently pursuing a Masters of Science in Information Systems Technology at the George Washington University School of Business.

Services Overview Specializing in advanced web application development, interface design, CMS integrations and CMS plugin development, our team carries abundant experience with leading systems such as Zend Framework, Code Igniter, WordPress and Drupal. Additionally, we have developed a series of successful commercial CMS plugins, most notably WP-Property and WP-Invoice.

Skills and Expertise Usability Dynamics offers a diversified team of experts armed with a wide array of skills who excel in WordPress, Drupal, and CodeIgniter development. Additionally, they possess a thorough understanding of unique business processes and enjoy developing technological solutions to fit and enhance those business processes.

Functional

Technical

Business

• Full-fledged web application development (Front-end and back-end)

• PHP (Zend, CakePHP & CodeIgniter) and .NET Development and SharePoint

• Social media interaction, branding and reputation management

• Custom web-based billing and payment solutions • Customer Relations Management (CMS) systems development

• JavaScript (jQuery, Prototype) and VBScript

• Customer relations and project management processes

• WordPress and Drupal Development (Plugins, Modules, and Themes)

• Sales, accounting, and logistical processes

• Front-end Development (XHTML, HTML5, CSS2 and CSS3)

• Advanced analytics, usability studies, and social demographic factors

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems development

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Quality Assurance We understand the need for clients to have oversight on their projects. To support this need, we utilize customer-facing project management software that allows clients to have direct oversight over project progression. Our project management system is used for sharing documents, wireframes, and tracking tasks. In addition, all correspondence is consolidated into one system, minimizing the reliance on e-mails and other venues. Our development process can be made available to our clients and typically utilizes a code versioning and management platform. This means that all the development is conducted in a manner that saves time and possesses a structured distribution. Technology & Systems Whether creating a brochure website, an online shopping store, or a customized web application for your business process, we will deliver the most value at the lowest cost.

typically free, have a major supporting community behind them, and are always being improved upon. We are active members of these supporting communities and have released a few solutions of our own. All of our released software has gained a strong following and numerous high ratings across the board.

Cited Projects Some of the works in our portfolio are confidential and sensitive. We ask that you only use these works for your internal business decisions without further distribution. Contact information for portfolio clients is available upon request.

We keep your prices low by relying as much as possible on open source software. For a client needing a content management system, we would typically utilize WordPress1 or Drupal2 and for online sales, we may use Shopp3 or Magento4 . For advanced web applications, the ideal framework will depend on the purpose. In general, we rely on PHP frameworks such as CodeIgniter5 and CMS frameworks such as ExpressionEngine6. Why use open source? Open source programs are 1 WordPress is the most popular open-source CMS system. http://wordpress.org 2 Drupal is a very popular open-source CMS and is a good framework for advanced web applications. http://drupal.org 3 Shopp is a commercial ecommerce plugin for WordPress. http://shopplugin.net 4 Magento is an e-commerce platform developed primarily for mid-level e-commercesites. http://www.magentocommerce.com 5 CodeIgniter is an open source Web Application Framework that expedites the development time of complex web applications. http://expressionengine.com 6 ExpressionEngine is a commercial CMS system built upon CodeIgniter. http://expressionengine.com

ÂŠ Usability Dynamics, Inc.

UsabilityDynamics.com

WP- Property

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

WP-Property Developed in-house from the ground up, WP-Property is the most popular real estate management plugin for WordPress. To date, the WP-Property plugin surpasses the next most popular WordPress real estate plugin by a multiple of 3. This healthy lead is directly attributed to superb quality, good usability, and continuously added features. The plugin allows WordPress users turn their websites into powerful real estate websites without having to hire a developer or spend a fortune buying another software package.

• Utilized by over 2,500 real estate and property management businesses • A 5-star rating on WordPress.org • Over 25,000 downloads to-date To capitalize upon WP-Property, we have released a premium WordPress real estate theme called the Denali. Within weeks the new theme has successfully broken into the WordPress Theme market, being used by over 200 businesses.

MARIOS MICHAEL Wp-Property

“I would like to say that the work you guys have done so far on WP-Property is fantastic and I hope to be able to use it as a solution along with the Denali for many more real estate customers here in Cyprus.”

UsabilityDynamics.com

eInstruction, Inc.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

eInstruction, Inc. is a multimillion dollar international company that came to Usa-

bility Dynamics for advice and assistance with their public facing website. Their proprietary CMS was not fully functional and had never been pushed to a production server – this situation resulted in lost revenues.

Our team forged a solution by researching different content management systems for one that would best fit their business processes. We made our determination and advised them to utilize the open source CMS Drupal.

After which we implemented the system from start to finish. This produced a dynamic and engaging website built from the ground up to be user friendly for both customers and internal personnel.

Features

• Multi role publishing workflow • Site supports 7 different languages • Multi-faceted enterprise level search

Technologies

• Drupal 6 Deployment, Administration, and Theme Development • XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript • Custom PHP for specific modules and functionality

AMANDA KELLY eInstruction, Inc.

“Usability Dynamics provided the technical leadership, direction, and coding for a complex redesign and custom Drupal CMS implementation. They worked within our budget and made a nearly impossible deliverable schedule become possible due to their hard work, diligence and extensive technical knowledge.”

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SeeJoeRock, Inc.

SeeJoeRock, Inc. is a small startup that aims to connect local and indie bands with talent scouts via the SeeJoeRock.com platform. SeeJoeRock contacted our team in need of urgent help. After months of significant development, they realized their current provider didn’t have what it takes to successfully launch a complex web application. Our expert team stepped in and re-engineered the entire system to be functional, usable, and stable.

Features Thats an excellent plugin. I would say this is #1 useful tool for web consultants. Great! – Vamsi

This is a wonderful plugin! Absolutely brilliant work on this, so thank you. - Richard Tape

• Custom web application based on a Clipshare framework • Multi-role system • Social networking elements including: friends, messaging, comments, ratings, status updates, and events • Integration with third party classifieds software

WP Invoice

WP-Invoice is an innovative plugin created in late 2009 that allows WordPress users to track pending and paid invoices directly from their WordPress control panel. Invoices are sent directly from the control panel and payments are processed on the merchant’s website using PayPal or credit card. After the WP-Invoice release, this first-of-its-kind plugin received immediate notice and notoriety, being featured by Smashing Magazine and countless other blogs and “Top WordPress Plugins” lists. Many other plugins have been developed in recent years that attempt to clone WP-Invoice, but none have succeeded in overtaking WP-Invoice as the leading invoicing and billing plugin in the WordPress community.

“During the development of SeeJoeRock.com, and over the course of easily 8 months, we had worked with several companies to get the site developed and launched but unfortunately, that wasn’t happening, until we found Usability Dynamics. They were able to jump in, organize, and reconstruct our site in a matter of weeks where the others were unable to do in months.“ - Mary Adkins, Founder/ CEO, SeeJoeRock

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Tandem Properties, Inc. Don Lipper came to us on behalf of Tandem Properties, Inc. – a California-based property management company overseeing 16 separate apartment communities in Davis, California. We ended up designing and programming separate websites for Tandem Properties: a corporate site, TandemProperties.com and a search engine optimized site, DavisApartmentSearch.com.

We developed extensive functionality that allowed dual access to property listings using Google Docs integration. Additionally, we included an advanced property search and a Tour Registration system. The Tour Registration system instantly notifies the property manager, creates a Google Calendar event, and adds the prospective tenant into a CRM system.

Features

“Andy and the Usability Dynamics team are wonderful to work with. They are responsive, knowledgeable, come up with creative solutions and go above and beyond in every way imaginable. I look forward to working with them again in the future!” - Kathleen Kenney, Project Manager, SPARK Experience

• • • • • •

Anime Expo

WordPress Powered CMS WP-Property Powered Property Management Denali-based WordPress Themes Google Calendar Synchronization Property Tour Registration Google Docs integration

Anime Expo When SPARK Experience came to us with the Anime Expo pro-

ject, their project was behind schedule. They needed an immediate set up of a powerful website in order to meet a deadline for an upcoming exhibition. Anime Expo was a unique project in that the client specifically requested the system be built upon the WordPress CMS. This request created a challenge because the complex page layouts would make future site administration very difficult. After conducting in-depth research, our team determined the best fit would be building a template upon the Carrington Build infrastructure, a system developed by Crowd Favorite. “Build” would allow for very advanced page layouts and included a drag-and-drop page layout builder. We were confident that this proven system would be an excellent platform for the advanced website layout Anime Expo required. Two full-time developers were dedicated to the project, taking the SPARK-provided designs and converting them into a powerful WordPress template within a month’s time. Deadline met – Expo success.

Features • WordPress powered CMS with multiple templates • Carrington Build integration for advanced drag-and-drop layouts

• • • • •

Multiple slideshows and content sliders Forum integration Hotel management for reservations YouTube channel player integration Countdown Widget

“Of the 12 web developers we interviewed for our future websites, half said they would be using your WP-Property plugin to power our site. So we figured, why not go directly to the source? I contacted Usability Dynamics and they totally blew the other developers out of the water in terms of price, competence, follow-through and going above and beyond even before we had a signed contract. In this case, the 13th developer turned out to be a very lucky number for us. – Don Lipper, Owner, Write the First Time

UsabilityDynamics.com

Saint Olaf Catholic Church Saint Olaf Catholic Church is based out of busy downtown of Minneapo-

lis, Minnesota. They came to us needing a dynamic website that would allow them to communicate with their community. Saint Olaf provided a design and page layout – our job was to integrate it with a CMS that would provide the kind of information sharing they desired. We used WordPress as a framework for the website and developed various additional features.

Features

Thats an excellent plugin. I would say this is #1 useful tool for web consultants. Great! – Vamsi This is a wonderful plugin! Absolutely brilliant work on this, so thank you. - Richard Tape

• • • •

Ability to list audio sermons and music Calendar of upcoming events and location Event registration system with payment processing WordPress powered CMS

After its initial launch, revisions were made to this ongoing project in order to best serve the needs of this client.

North East Louisiana Tea Party Dr. Henry Hollenberg contacted us in late 2009 for help in creating an online presence for his organization, the North East Louisiana Tea Party (NELTP). NELTP is a bi-partisan, non-profit political organization based out of Louisiana with a thriving member base. Initially, the website was developed with these features: • WordPress Powered CMS • Commenting and voting on issues published on the site • Upcoming event and meeting system As the NELTP membership grew and new system needs were exposed.

WE INTEGRATED ADDITIONAL FEATURES: • BuddyPress Powered groups for communication and idea collaboration • Newsletter system with multi-group e-mail lists and text messaging • Phone Tree system for distribution of non-email contact lists to communication leaders for phone contacts • Membership Payment system for tracking membership dues for each member

“I’ve used Andy on several web projects. From concept to completion, he’s exceptional to work with. Not only does he work efficiently and quickly, but will often suggest less expensive options. He has taught me a lot about working with websites, thus helping me to expand my own client base.” – Pat Moses, Saint Olaf Catholic Church

UsabilityDynamics.com

Capital Deals

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

KEIKO WONG CapitalDealsOnline.com

“We met Andy, the founder of Usability Dynamics, then

Capital Deals has been utilizing our consulting and development services since

Features:

early 2004. At that time, they started with a very modest website developed to

A notable feature of this website is the Google Products integra-

meet their budget. Over the years, Capital Deals has expanded into a profitable

tion. The website automatically lists its entire inventory on Google

and well-established St. Paul business and their website has grown with them.

Products, bringing Capital Deals ready-to-buy visitors for free. As

We used the Shopp shopping cart and a WordPress content management system

always, the website is SEO compliant, with Google Analytics, and

for this website – both allow ease of use for the client and their customers.

numerous useful custom features

TwinCitiesTech.com, about six years ago. Since then he has been a great asset to our business. We started selling used goods in a small hidden retail space. Without Internet it was very hard to draw traffic into our store. We started from a very basic website which introduced our services.”

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Letter from the President Thank you for your interest in Usability Dynamics, the result of a merger between TwinCitiesTech.com, Inc., a company I founded in 2004, and JBRW Consulting, a company my co-founder, Reid Williams, founded in 2010. Our decision to merge our individually successful businesses was based on several factors, but primarily we determined that our combined forces would allow us both to better serve our clients and would offer a stronger opportunity for expansion. Both businesses had an excellent client base, vigorous word-of-mouth referrals, and good growth in users of our public software – both were operating at full capacity, but the individual infrastructures created growth limitations. Our merger allows us an enhanced infrastructure that can absorb new growth, including hiring additional full-time developers. Since our May 2011 merger, we have successfully handled several large projects with ease, being able to rely on our cross-domain expertise and increased staff.

StinkBall Fantasy Football Anime Expo StinkBall is fantasy football – with a twist.

When this customer came to us, they wanted to create a fantasy football game that centered on how poorly a team performed versus how well a team performed. In response, we built a fantasy football system on top of WordPress and BuddyPress, and by extending the native functionality of BuddyPress, we were able to integrate extensive custom rules for calculating scores. We also integrated Google spreadsheets, which helped ease the administrative aspect of running a fantasy football game. In the end, our team gave StinkBall the ability to have leagues, teams, and automatically calculated scores every week of the football season.

Features • An extensive, custom WordPress plugin • Leagues, Teams, and integrated communities with messaging, message boards, and league standings charts

Reid and I worked together long before the merger of our companies, originally meeting in 2005 as fellow Marines. In the years since then, we collaborated on numerous projects, deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, and maintained a strong professional relationship.

• A dynamic “Team Builder” • Both paid and free leagues • Online payments through MerchantPlus • Google Docs integration for statistics importing • A dynamic research tool capable of compiling stats for yearly and weekly performances

Reid currently resides in Stafford, Virginia, while I reside in Hampstead, North Carolina. Shortly after the merger, we hired Maxim Peshkov, an extremely qualified and thorough programmer I have worked with for over a year. We also brought on Teo Maragakis as our in-house designer. Teo is often involved in development processes. Allyson and Cody, who also reside in North Carolina, are our part-timers, handling customer support, first tier troubleshooting, and administrative tasks. We are a small team, much like a family, who work closely together relying daily on digital venues for communications. We refer to Usability Dynamics as a “creative web development agency” because we see ourselves as artists with very strong technical skills. We are not machinists; we do not, if you will, create widgets. All of our projects are unique, and as with most artists, we care more about creating something useful and unique than simply collecting a paycheck. We care about what we do – and it shows in every project and piece of software we publish. As a team, we all look forward to future opportunities to help our clients establish success online through the development, design, and implementation of innovative websites and best-fit software.

Andy Potanin, President Usability Dynamics, Inc. (651) 400-0057

UsabilityDynamics.com