Websites grow up fast around Twelve Horses, and we are pleased to see another one go out into the world with www.billmelatersolutions.com.

BillMeLater®, Inc., recognized by Red Herring as one of the “Top 100 Global Private Technology Firms Driving the Future” brought to the Twelve Horses team the task of designing their new merchant site. The goal - grow the existing BillMeLater® Merchant Network and add to the over 800 online retailers who currently employ a BML solution on their web site.

Designed with that goal in mind, the new site provides not only information about the suite of BillMeLater solutions and services, but also showcases key merchants’ experiences with their BML online payment solution. Visitors can view video testimonials and review case studies from merchants like eLuxury.com, Zappos.com, Overstock.com, and Continental Airlines, to name a few.

The clean look and streamlined navigation of the front end also translate to the back end implementation. Internal BML stakeholders can create and edit their own pages via the Twelve Horses content management system.

BillMeLater derives success from its ability to provide an effortless shopping experience for the online consumer. Their new merchant site does the same in producing an effortless decision-making process for those retailers seeking to improve their online order process.

When designing a website or going through the re-design process it is important to develop a design that is professional and aesthetically pleasing to the eye.  However it is even more critical to integrate marketing and conversion improvement tactics into the website to ensure the overall success of your business objectives. 

Twelve Horses recently launched a new website - efurnitureshowroom.com. This website is an online furniture store with discounted furniture items.  It has marketing integrated throughout the entire website.  The screenshot is just of the homepage and only a select few marketing strategies have been highlighted. For further description see below.

Notice the following: 

1. Phone Number - The phone number is listed on all pages in the header for easy reference for anyone who is ready to call as they search throughout the website.  The graphic makes it easy to recognize as a reference to contact the furniture company.
2. Website Search - Having the search in the upper part of the screen makes it an easy for a website visitor to quickly search for what they are looking for if they happen to be having difficulty finding the specific furniture item they are looking for.
3. SEO-friendly Categories – The category names were developed from what the most common areas of furniture are as well as what people are searching for online.  If you know a specific product it is easy to find which category it would be listed under.  Having too many categories would be overwhelming and confusing yet having too few would inhibit the visitors ability to find what they are looking for.
4. Homepage Clearance – The main homepage graphic has a clearance and sale promotion.  This is important because many users who shop online compared to a retail store are looking for good deals.  This is of immediate interest to those users and directs them to the furniture products they are looking for.
5. Free Shipping – One of the main unique advantages this online furniture store offers over its competition is free shipping.  Shipping is a major concern for online furniture shoppers as the items are generally large and bulky.  Not having to worry about an extra charge at the end of the checkout is re-assuring.  This is emphasized on the homepage with a website graphic in the upper right corner.
6. Homepage Categories – The homepage has the main (most popular) categories in a graphical format on the homepage for users that are visual learners compared to readers.  They will find the area of the home they are interested in and can click easily into the products they want.
7. Shopping Cart – There is a shopping cart snapshot the left on every screen to allow users to quickly view the number of items they have so far and total price.  If they have a specific budget in mind they can make changes as necessary very easily without having to click into the shopping cart.  Payment options are listed in the left for quick reference.
8. Email Capture – A simple email subscription call-out box encourages users to sign-up for a furniture newsletter if they enjoy the products they find and information they come across.
9. SEO Text – There is a section at the bottom of the page to tell the search engines what the website is about, what it has to offer, and other such information.  This is useful as it may come up in SERP result pages descriptions.
10. Information Links – The footer contains links to important promotions and information such as faq, shipping, privacy policies, terms and conditions, contact information and more.  This is the traditional area of the website viewers look for this type of information so keeping it familiar to them is important.

Hopefully these focus items will help you create the most effective online shopping experience possible. Let us know if we can help you with your ecommerce objectives.

One of Twelve Horses latest launches is the newly designed and developed Reno-Tahoe, America’s Adventure Place website located at visitrenotahoe.com. The Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority (RSCVA) looked to us to effectively communicate the excitement and value of the destination, as well as give them the necessary web tools to feature and promote the region going forward. Take a gander and let us know what you think of the look and feel.

Branding & Strategy

Before even beginning to architect the site or design comps we held several branding sessions to really uncover what the America’s Adventure place brand is and what the organization wants to project. In other words, what really differentiates the Reno-Tahoe destination from another location, and why would visitors want to go there? We identified the items of most importance, and the images and structure of the site reflect this.

Stakeholders also provided valuable input and feedback, which dictated certain elements of the site such as the Play-Stay-Dining-Events box directly below the main flash promo area.

You should also notice the emphasis on action, outdoor adventure, weather, which is prominent because of the large number of beautiful sunny days, and water because, unlike Vegas, Reno has a river that runs through it and is in close proximity to mountain snow and Lake Tahoe.

In general the homepage is designed to incorporate images, videos and feeds (such as the blog) to bring dynamic content to the forefront so it is never static. What’s new, what’s happening?  - there is always something exciting going on.

Website Design & Development

Building out this site required careful consideration to the organization of content (there were 6500 pages on the old site and currently 1500 on the new). Equally important was addressing the needs of marketing, convention and tourism sales, public relations, as well as the stakeholders that have a vested interest in the organization’s ability to promote convention and tourism business for Washoe County.

If you look at many other convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs) there is often a habit of creating specific portals for web visitors to enter the site. This is the way they deal with the challenging issue of organizing large amounts of content. For example:

The problem with this is it impacts the search engine optimization of the website as it relates to the ranking of the homepage, and one also runs the risk of not exposing say, a meeting planner to the information you would qualify for visitors/guests. We really tried hard to clearly present all of the information directly from the homepage.

Speaking of SEO and usability, before we launched the website the entire old site was mapped in order to maintain rankings while the search engines indexed the new site. This way, instead of receiving a 404 each page was referred to the proper page on the new website.

Web Development on the Backend

The RSCVA makes use of our Content Management System or CMS to edit and change all aspects of the website. It includes some cool custom applications such as:

• Stakeholder Application
• Individual stakeholders such as local hotels and casinos can edit their specific pages via their own login. They can change content, upload media and photos, and manipulate RSS feeds. These feeds are then displayed on the main calendar and events pages.
• Newsletter Application
• Instead of having to login in to a separate platform to design and deliver their email marketing campaigns, they can do it all through the CMS. All actions directly integrate with MessageMaker, so they can follow up on delivery rates and other pertinent statistics.
• Press Release Application
• The press release application gives public relations has the ability to construct press releases in the WYSIWYG editor and upload them to the website. They can also set specific permissions and date of release.
• Form Generator
• The form generator gives non-technical staff or webmasters the ability to build out promotions or giveaways to collect valuable customer information. The forms integrate with MessageMaker, which allows them to export lists to CSV or segment customers based on the specific promotions or items of interest.
• Search Engine Optimization Application
• The SEO application gives the RSCVA the ability to manage redirects, add analytics code, change meta data and much more.

Also included in the CMS are other useful items such as Workflow and Permissions. This gives staff the ability to send updates for approval and share the workload in order to keep content fresh and current. This extends across the board to all departments including:

• Finance
• Convention Sales
• Public Relations
• Tourism

Data Replication Engine

Behind it all is Twelve Horses’ Data Replication Engine (DRE). The RSCVA uses the DRE to take contacts from their website and push them into MessageMaker. It keeps the database current, and automatically manages action like, before email newsletter deliveries it does a check for all unsubscribes to be sure they never send an email to someone that does not want to receive it.

There is much more to it, but hopefully this gives you a good idea of what went into the website. Certainly a great level of consideration and technology has been applied to the construction of this website.

tags: website design, web site development, search engine optimization, seo, data replication engine, content managment system, reno, tahoe, rscva, ” reno sparks convention & visitors authority”

As is the case with most of our clients, the web site design is only part of the project. More often than not they entail the incorporation of Forms, Image and Video Galleries, Virtual Tours, Member Portals, Data Management and Integration, pulling RSS feeds and News Applications, eCommerce engines, and handy Content Management Systems sitting on the backend for easy web site updates. All of this of course is tailored or customized to suit the individual client’s needs. And we get a lot of different needs.

Tuesday, Mike Henderson posted about the launch of a ski resort blog. Yesterday, Josh Kenzer talked about Data Replication. Today, I’ll show a few other sites that launched in the past week or so. Each one is structured differently. My goal is to try and blog about each website that we launch. Fortunately, things get a little crazy around here, so I can’t always get to them. But I will do my best!

Client	Site	Description
Kiley Ranch	www.kileyranch.com	Located in Sparks, Nevada, the 800 acres at Kiley Ranch will support a thriving community with an emphasis on economic and environmental sustainability. Neighborhoods of distinctive, well-designed single-family homes and townhomes will be walking distance from a village-style commercial district, business parks, schools, and over 100 acres of dedicated open space and a 200 acre wildlife wetland preserve. All working together to make Kiley Ranch a master planned community like no other.
BeDynamic	www.bedynamic.com	Located in Seattle, Washington, BeDynamic® provides the travel and tourism industry with a single-source solution for capturing and managing up-to-date local content and destination information. Designed for travel providers such as hotels, airlines, car rental agencies, and others who sell travel services, our content aggregation and delivery service increases the quality, depth, timeliness and affordability of specialized information about local events and venues.
Kummer Kaempfer	www.kkbrf.com	With roots dating back nearly a half-century, the statewide law firm of Kummer Kaempfer Bonner Renshaw & Ferrario is one of Nevada’s largest and most prominent law firms whose legal teams have a long history of creating winning strategies to help clients solve important and complex business issues.  The firm is an invited member of Meritas, an international affiliation of business law firms that gives Kummer Kaempfer clients a global reach on a wide range of important business and legal issues.

Lake Tahoe Ski resorts have really stepped up their websites in recent years with social media elements like video, podcasting, and blogs. It’s no longer a novelty to have regular updates, rich media content and interactivity, it’s a requirement. Skiers and snowboarders are interacting with online content in ways they never have before, and Twelve Horses is proud to announce and show off the new Alpine Meadows Blog.

A blog can be a great tool for ski resort marketing. It’s the best option for centering the social media content that you distribute out to your various web venues. We think this one is really functional and looks super sharp. The designer, Scott Patterson, included some cool social media features like the YouTube window, profile links and twitter updates. He also created drop-down menus to keep the sidebar nice and neat, and a full resort info menu to seamlessly blend the blog with the website.

But when every resort at Tahoe has a blog as part of their online marketing strategy, the challenge lies in rising above the chatter to effectively convey the story of the mountain and the people who make it great. Alpine is doing a great job of it. We think the people who make Alpine Meadows work are awesome, and we’ve had a blast helping them create content and videos to represent their brand and interact with their visitors.

Their Flickr account has been getting great traffic from day one, and we have helped them create a great community around images from the mountain. Google and Yahoo image searches now index Flickr images, but still the traffic from Flickr searches expands by orders of magnitude the viewership of Alpine Meadows content.

The @skialpine Twitter profile is bridging the gap between home and the mountain by helping skiers and boarders stay on top of changing conditions such as avalanche closures, run and lift openings, weather and events in real-time right from mobile devices.

Their video channel is doing a great job of documenting events and operations at the mountain.

Now the SkiAlpine blog is bringing it all together in one place. Check out their blog, video channel, Twitter updates and Flickr account and look for more awesome photos and videos when the snow falls again!

-Mike

I was recently working with one of our designers from the Creative Services team to produce this ad for the Nevada Business Journal when it occurred to me that I have never blogged about the work we do for the Las Vegas Monorail; therefore, I am taking the opportunity to do so now.

Before starting a relationship with Twelve Horses, the Las Vegas Monorail did not sell tickets online. This was in part because they did not have the technology to take online ticket purchases, as well as the fact that they needed an enhanced web presence. What we helped them uncover was that a lot of opportunity existed to create new relationships, increase awareness, and generate a greater demand for tickets.

If the Las Vegas Monorail was going to sell tickets online they would need an ecommerce solution that was flexible and customizable. For example, Las Vegas receives a plethora of different groups to the city. If the Monorail was going to service these customers they would need to be able to handle large group purchases, as well as offer special incentives to encourage them to do so. Furthermore, non-technical staff would have to be able to manage it whether it was adding groups, defining the ticket price, specifying date ranges, managing the payment options, setting shipping preferences, and much more.

Needless to say we built it for them. Here is a look at some of the features of the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform.

Managing Channel Partners

The Las Vegas Monorail works with a number of channel partners and groups. The ticketing platform allows them to set-up a revenue share with these partners, as well as implement their own branding and images online, in emails, and print. It is extremely flexible. For example, they can run multiple promotions at once. This was the case for the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where there were two different promotions - discounts for attendees and discounts for exhibitors.

Ticketing

The ticketing features are very diverse and capable of handling a multitude of different scenarios. Additionally, integration of ticket tracking and reporting is providing the Monorail with deeper customer insight, which enables to provide a higher level of customer service. Here are just some examples:

1. Automated postings of ticket blocks and and auto removal of postings by set parameters such as date of expiration.
2. Discount Codes defined and assigned either randomly or branded such as “CES2008.”
3. Overrides conducted either temporarily or permanently to groups, types, or partners.
4. Tiered ticket pricing based on quantity, time purchased, or aggregates.
5. Logic in the ticketing prevents, for example, trying to use standard postal delivery when it is international.

Fulfillment

The ticketing platform is flexible enough to allow the fulfillment of tickets via email, direct shipping, and soon - mobile.

1. Electronic delivery allows the customer to print the voucher at home and redeem onsite.
2. Email confirmations sent automatically with purchase confirmation, canceled order and refund, and tickets shipped. Email templates also include branding based on channel partner and/or promotion.
3. When the Monorail handles the print fulfillment they can download all the contacts and do a mail merge on all their envelopes, mailing labels, and tickets.

Customer Service

1. The customer service module gives the Monorail the ability to look up the customer based on any information they give.
2. Those with set privileges can void and change tickets, which reconciles on the financial side and funnels down to the various communication channels.

Reporting

1. The Dashboard shows financial report summaries and projections, so they know how they are doing.
2. Integration with Salesforce matches opportunity numbers to promotions so they can track real-time ticket sales and the success of a campaign. It also allows them to see important items such as what a particular vendor or channel partners agreement was from the previous year.
3. Redemption tracking not only makes sure the ticket cannot be used again, it also lets the Monorail know where and when the customer scanned the ticket, so they can better understand traffic and know where there major stops are.

All of this may seem like a lot, but this is just a brief overview of everything the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform can do. Suffice to say, the integration of this ecommerce solution has unlocked another channel of additional revenue for the Monorail, and because it is business automation at its best, it is completely scalable and requires very little additional internal resources to get it done.

tags: online, ticketing, ecommerce, solution, business, automation, las vegas, nevada

Every now and then certain benefits of having clients like Heavenly Mountain Ski Resort arise, and employees of Twelve Horses have the chance to get out of the office and head out to the ski slopes.

Last week was the “TransWorld SNOWboarding Team Challenge” at Heavenly, so a few of use headed up from Reno to South Lake Tahoe to see some young men and women GO BIG in the terrain park.

It was an absolutely beautiful day and the snow conditions were spring-like. Several of the competing riders took the liberty of dressing up in costume, so you would often see Elvis, a Blues Brother, or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle doing a fat rail grab many gravity defying feet above the ground.

Heavenly’s unique location affords some of the most incredible views of the surrounding mountains and Lake Tahoe that any other ski resort in the area can offer. After a day of riding and soaking up the scenery, it is off to town and into the many different restaurants, nightclubs, and casinos that make up South Lake.

I thought the ski season was pretty much over, but with more than a foot of new snow forecasted tonight it looks like there is still time to get in a few turns. 

Just in time for Valentines Day, the Lovelock Chamber of Commerce has launched the Lock Your Love in Lovelock E-Card. Go to Loverslock.com and click on the "Send a Love Card to Someone Special" link to send a special note.  Twelve Horses was commissioned to create this love card to help promote the Lovers Lock Plaza.  Visitors can purchase locks from local retailers and symbolically lock their love by connecting their lock to the chain links that surround the plaza. It’s a unique and romantic way to spend the day.