Building custom solutions doesn’t mean starting from scratch

This past year, a client came to us looking for a quick and clever solution for a tasting room companion. The companion would be a digital notebook for ratings on particular wines, as well as any notes the taster may have. The experience should be easy for not only the tasting participants, but also for business owners putting the tasting together. It should also be inexpensive.

A typical process for Crushwire would be as follows:

• A tasting manager sets up an account, and creates a tasting session with a secret passcode
• The manager adds a collection of wines with descriptions and images that will be available at the tasting
• When visitors arrive, they are given an iPad and passcode for the current tasting session
• The user signs in, or creates an account, and after providing a passcode, they can write notes on any wine they taste, as well as give a rating (1-5 stars)

The client had considered other solutions where developers would build the new app from scratch. The cost was too high however, especially since the client was not completely certain on many of the project’s smaller details. To commit to a custom solution without seeing any working version first seemed too intimidating.

When we entered the project, we knew we could get the project up and running quickly, allowing the client to see much of their idea realized in just weeks. The remaining custom work would continue as the client used their product and decided on many of the finishing details the site would require.

Our ability to roll out the first version of a project quickly is the result of our custom process. Relying on existing projects, such as our managed CMS solution, or our robust CRM offering, we are able to get an installed working site in days, and slowly build off of it. These veteran solutions serve as the cornerstone to your project. Find out how to get started today by getting in touch with us.

In the case of Crushwire, we quickly setup a MODx website for the client. MODx gave the customer a lot of features out of the gate. These included:

• The ability to create different users, such as tasting participants and tasting room managers
• Easily edit pages on the site with simple HTML editors
• Customize the look and feel of the site
• Lock certain pages so that only tasting room managers can see or edit them

raSANTIAGO then went on implement the custom aspects of the project. Knowing that the tasting participants would have an iPad, we quickly created a new database to store all the wine reviews and used javascript to update the database every time that a user added or edited a note, or gave a wine a new rating. We also made sure that our solution was touch friendly. All items fit well inside the page on an iPad and we made sure that our star rating system used graphics large enough to be clicked easily for everyone.

We additionally used our CRM’s built-in feature of password-protected pages to create a ‘Managers Only’ page. Here, a tasting room manager could look through all the tasting sessions they’ve created, create new session, or just duplicate an old session. Clicking into a session lets a manager edit the wines available at any tasting.

The client also wants the user to login, that way they can later look at all the reviews a user may have given. We were concerned that people may decide against using Crushwire if they were asked to create an account. Filling out multiple fields on an iPad is the last thing you want to do when you have a course full of delicious wine ahead of you. Instead, we opted for a Facebook/Twitter integration that would allow the user to simply login using their credentials for either service. From that information, we would simply auto create an account for them! In addition to streamlining the registration, we’ve also collected helpful information on how to reach out to them later. Learn how you can integrate with social media just by asking.

Each step got us closer and closer to the goal. All the while, the client was able to review our process and make changes or comments to items that we had yet to start on. Additionally, we relied on solutions we have deployed in the past to minimize any potential problems. Start building today by dropping us a note.