Increditek
Increditek wins Maryland Small Business Administration’s 2009 award for Entrepreneurial Success and contracts THUD to develop new web presence.

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CORPORATE AMERICA

CLIENT LOCATION: Bel Air, MD
CLIENT WEBSITE: www.thearenaclub.com

PRE THUD: The Arena Club is one of the newest, full service athletic clubs in Harford County. In the first year and a half of being open, they worked with three vendors trying to get a web site to meet their needs. Getting a professional presence site to meet their minimum needs was a struggle in it's own rite, let alone a site that could come close to what the owners envisioned. After a couple meetings, The Arena Club was anxious for THUD to work for them. The owners could clearly see we did not just build web sites, we provided web based solutions that would generate membership and reduce operating expenses.

POST THUD: It was easy to see The Arena Club had a vision and they needed help interpreting their vision on the Internet. In 2005, we launched their first web site with a Content Management System, several Administration Modules and web based Scheduler. In 2008, we evaluated the changes going on within the club and fine tuned the Site Architecture and gave the site a redesign.

Initial Site Design & Programming: We prepared two custom comps for The Arena Club, utilizing their logo and color scheme. After 2 rounds of small edits, what you see here is what was approved for launch. One key feature was adding different header images for each section of the site, a section being defined as an area for each of the main navigation links. As a user navigates through the site, they experience a consistent look and feel, with a subtle change in the header image that is specific to the section they are in. All of the main navigation and sub-navigation utilize rollover features to ensure the user knows they are on a link. As with every site we build, Basic Search Engine Optimization is standard protocol, as well as W3C compliance.

Content Management System: The Content Management System (CMS) is a user friendly environment that a specified user must login to in order to utilize. THUD's CMS allows users to update copy, or content, on any page of their web site that has been setup to do so. This includes adding/editting of images, PDF documents, MS Office documents and much more. If you can use the basic features of MS Word, then our CMS will be a piece of cake!

Administration Modules: The uses several of these modules: Employment, Events, News and Schedules. These modules are in the Data Administration area of the CMS. Each module allows the user to add, edit, delete and view information in a basic data entry environment. Each of the modules can hold an unlimited number of records, has extensive sorting capabilities for easily managing the data, and has an active/inactive status to determine if the record should be displayed on the web site or not.

Scheduler: The Scheduler is a very complex tool that allows staff to secure sections of the club by time intervals with the ability to have custom recurrences. The Scheduler has an associated User Administration Module that allows the system administrator to create user accounts and assign what portions of the club they have access to schedule. This module gave the entire staff the ability to see what was going on in any portion of the club at any given time. Before the Scheduler came along, middle management was assigned certain areas of the club that they were responsible for scheduling. When questions about reservations arose, there was always delays; from tracking down the person responsible for scheduling, to their schedule note taking abilities. Needless to say, it was a very difficult and time consuming process that had too much room for error.

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