Inmark Packaging located in Atlanta, Georgia is a perfect example of a longer engagement for our team. We began with a Discovery Phase in Jan 2010, and the project officially kicked off one year ago this month. The scope of work spans 9 websites across 4 different divisions of the company, focused on both Retail and B2B customers.

Long engagements take a tremendous amount of planning, strategy & heavy lifting. It also requires our team to be patient through the process, motivated and focused on the end goals. We like results, and seeing the fruits of our labor with engagements like Inmark’s is a true test of endurance and organization.

Here’s a peak into this holistic solution we’ve been building.

Identifying & Planning the Big Picture

Inmark is an established company of 35 years, with an existing customer base that extends Internationally. Yet, they also have untapped markets with tremendous opportunity. Through months of research, analysis and brainstorming, we finalized a plan to build 9 different websites (focusing on different markets) coupled with a CSR tool and custom Content Management System. All these solutions tie into their new Enterprise Resource Planning system, a multi-million dollar investment that will dramatically change their business’ operations.

Different Audiences + Different Needs = Different Websites

Corporate Re-Branding & Division Sub-Branding

Brand cohesiveness across all 4 divisions was imperative. There needed to be a common element, yet possess a uniqueness to differentiate them. We used color + iconography to embody Inmark’s International outreach and emerging markets.

Asset Creation & Art Direction

Our creative team works with a variety of photographers. Sometimes clients have their photographer of choice, and others lean on us to recommend and coordinate this effort. We had the great pleasure of collaborating with Don Matter in Atlanta. We were the bridge between client and photographer to assure style and composition aligned with the big picture.

Designing the User Experience

We’re heavy into the development phase for 4 of the 9 websites currently, looking to roll these out steadily this Fall. We targeted the B2B websites first to learn about their existing customers, and then apply this valuable knowledge to the new customers targeted within the Retail market.

We constantly remind ourselves that “we’re not the user” in our web persona development. By getting in the heads of Inmark’s existing customers, we began to understand the industry, needs & behaviors of these users. Even though the actions of the Retail audience will contrast those of B2B, we inhaled critical knowledge about the world of packaging and Inmark’s own products &  services along the way.

Rigid Container Packaging division’s homepage

Custom Content Management System + CSR tool (Customer Requests, Customer Mgt, Forums, Knowledge Base, Live Chat)

Complexity takes Time, Energy & Resources

Our long and complex engagement with Inmark exploits the very uniqueness of Caxiam Group. We helped define their problems, set a strategy, plan, organize and build 9 websites targeting very different audiences. We’ve become Inmark’s greatest ally in utilizing the web to solve business problems and amplify their brand. That takes a firm with a diverse palette of talent that can understand the challenges of mid-sized businesses and remain highly focused on the end results.

Does your business have an overwhelming challenge that needs a web-based solution? Not sure where to even begin? Give us a ring at 407.838.3158 or Contact Us today. Lets see if we can help you out!

My name is Zach Stevenson and I am a developer here at Caxiam Group. Today is my one year anniversary with Caxiam Group and to celebrate I am writing my first of many blog posts. As many in the industry know, when you start learning a new language or framework, you usually create a very simple application that just outputs the text ‘Hello World’. So I feel it’s fitting that as a developer joining the company’s blog that my first post be ‘Hello World’.

It’s not just me joining the blogging circuit here at Caxiam, but my fellow developers Luis Camilo and Tyson Willey have joined as well. Each one of us has a different programming background and because of that, the three of us make an amazing team. Our interests in web development span across almost every spectrum and therefore, so will our topics of discussion.

This is where you come in. We want you to want to discuss with us your opinions on the topics we post about so that we can all learn from each other. The developers here at Caxiam Group feel that it is impossible to become a great programmer in a silo, so we want to learn and develop from others in our industry.

We want to deliver posts that are new or informative to the web community. We know that our audience expects only the best from us, so we already compiled list of topics that we know will blow your socks off. We can’t wait to share everything with you all!

-Zach Stevenson & The Development Team

EntreLeadership is focused on small business entrepreneurs who are seeking to grow and lead with intentional leadership. Dave brings 20 years of practical business wisdom from the trenches, having built his business from a card table in his living room to a national brand. He’s a personal money-management expert, national radio personality, speaker, author and overall an amazing man. His mission to help people is intoxicating.

We all ended the week thinking the same thing – this is going to change our business forever.

Every day we soaked in about 6 hours of teachings focused on topics like goal setting, communication, personality styles, team unity, delegation, sales & marketing. We then had the remaining afternoon at the Swan & Dolphin resort to regurgitate what we had just learned. All three team members (myself, Ethan & Joel) also had the occasional one-on-one interaction with not only the leadership team, but Dave himself.

Here’s a peak into what we experienced at EntreLeadership here in Orlando:

Ethan, myself and the new guy Joel represented Caxiam Group

200 small business owners from various industries at EntreLeadership

Our first lesson on dreams, visions & goal setting

Graduation gifts from Dave’s team

Closing dinner at Epcot, Dave pulled out the “Never Give In” speech from Churchill

Sunset over the Swan & Dolphin resort – what a beautiful week here in Orlando

View more pictures over at our Flickr stream!

By nature of being a small business, we tend to think in ROI early & often. Working “on the business” for over a week and the small things we’re already implementing within our talented team (company mission statement & personality tests) has created momentum & energy. That alone can be considered a profitable decision and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.

Thank you Dave Ramsey and team for inspiring, motivating & sharing your unmatched wisdom!

The Great Weight-Off! (GWO) is used to reference both competitions as a whole, but is also its own competition that was opened to all Health First employees. The contestants would be able to compete as an individual and as a team for prizes.

The other competition is known as Slim-to-Win (STW) and was inspired by some of the recent, famous reality TV shows. This competition would be limited to 12 contestants, any employee who had a BMI of 35 or greater was eligible to apply.

The winners for both competitions are determined by whomever achieves the greatest amount of total percent body weight lost at the end of the 12-week competition.

Front-End Features

STW Contestant Slider
While GWO contestants were given a layer of anonymity by only having their first name and last initial shown on the website, STW contestants were front and center!

We utilized a jQuery slider and a playful design to showcase all the contestants.

Lose-O-Meter & Pound-O-Meter
The STW Lose-O-Meter and GWO Pound-O-Meter are the go to place to see who’s #1 this week in each of the competitions.

These meters are dynamically updated using data entered into the back-end utility we custom built specifically for GWO.

Individual & Team Standings
STW and GWO both  feature online, searchable standings for both individual and team competitors.

The individual standings are searchable based on their Health First ID number.

Teams can be searched by their team names

Featured Training Trip
The Featured Training Tips are updated weekly and users can stream them on the website.

A library of archived videos allows for easy browsing of past tips.

Custom Back-End Utilities

Weekly Winner
GWO contestants who go to the weekly weigh-ins are automatically given an entry into the Weekly Winner drawing. If a contestant shows up AND loses weight, they  get two entries.

The entry pool is automatically generated and Health First can use this tool to randomly pick the winner.

Weekly Weight Loss Tracking
An important piece of functionality was the ability for  Health First to track each contestant’s weekly weigh-in weight.

Using the contestant’s initial weight, Health First wasn’t just interested in how many pounds they lost, the code needed to also calculate the percent of body weight that the pound loss represented.

Conclusion
Working with Health First on the Great Weight-Off was a fun and great experience and we appreciate them trusting us with bringing their competitions to life on the Web!

Check out GreightWeightOff.org to see it in action.

I was more than thrilled (ecstatic, ridiculously grateful, super excited…) to get a job straight out of college with a company like Caxiam. I’ve always been a fan of small businesses and I think Caxiam is comprised of talented and dynamic people. As a team they identify each person’s individual talents and really capitalize on those. It helps not only the business, but the employees flourish.

There are many things I’ve learned in my first months of work at Caxiam; here are some of my favorites.

Successful collaboration takes good communication

…and remembering to use the manners your Momma taught you.

I did work as a team in college, but let’s be honest, it’s not the same. Sure you deal with differing personalities, but for the most part at my school classes were small so I ended up working with people who were my friends. Plus, we were so new to it all we hadn’t had time to have opinion on coding strategies, habits and preferences during a web project. At work there are lots of people collaborating on the same project. When you work on a file, you need to do your work in a way that facilitates the process. Sure, I might have some fancy naming convention I like, but it’s kind of rude to impose that on another person, would I want to have to translate someone else’s foreign naming? No way! So, basically, when working in a team environment on a project, say please, say thank you and communicate constantly. Oh, and be very nice to the developers, because when you commit to Git you WILL get a nasty merge conflict, and they are the heroes who will get you out of it.

Earning the trust of customers takes time…and patience

(and guess what, it’s frustrating on both sides!)

Clients don’t do it on purpose, and neither do I as an employee, but it will happen, we will cause accidental frustration. When I stopped to think about it, what did I expect? I was a stranger and hadn’t earned their trust yet.  That was an important lesson I learned working here. For the most part I think it comes down to earning their trust and making sure you aren’t expecting them to understand Greek (and yes, I realized quickly that those big fancy terms I learned in school are like Greek to a client. How could I expect them to know it?) Clients want you to be honest with them; they don’t have to trust me right away. Part of the job is earning their trust. Another important thing I learned was use plain English – sometimes us people in the web industry come off like we’re talking in an entirely foreign language. It’s frustrating when a doctor talks to you only using complicated medical terms, so it would be equally frustrating for a client to hear me using fancy web terms. Keep it simple.

The PC at work doesn’t appreciate you using the shortcuts from OSX.

I’m a Mac girl. I wasn’t always one. From Windows 3.1 until 2004 I worked exclusively on Windows machines. In 2004 I got my first Mac, a 12in PowerBook. When I started at Full Sail in 2008 I got my 15in MacBook Pro. I love OSX. I don’t really want to start a ‘Mac vs PC’ war. If one is more natural to you than the other, that’s awesome. Macs just have a more natural feel for me. Caxiam is a PC family. All of our computers run Windows, so out of my comfort zone I went and back onto a PC while at work. It hasn’t been overly unpleasant for me (Microsoft did a nice job with Windows 7), but I don’t think my Dell at work would say the same thing. If it could talk to me I think it’d have some choice words because I’m pretty sure it is entirely sick of me accidently utilizing the Alt like it is the Command key. Who knows what horrible things I’ve communicated through the Frankenstein shortcuts accidently used while working on my work PC, I’m surprised my computer hasn’t gone into self-destruct mode.

SEO Sounds like Voodoo Magic.

It’s not, but it sure can end up sounding like it is. One of the services that Caxiam offers is a large variety of Search Engine Optimization strategies for a business’ web presence. I’ve been working on some of those projects and I have decided that SEO is one of the hardest things to clearly talk about to clients. SEO is a legitimate, exceedingly important and vital thing for a web presence to have. Those facts are entirely true, but they don’t make SEO any easier to explain to clients. Caxiam has this awesome SEO Playbook they give their clients that helps explain and clarify what SEO truly is. I helped develop it and I think one of the hardest things was explaining it clearly enough that it wouldn’t just sound like untrustworthy magic. I’m describing something that is probably going to sound brand new and foreign, and just asking the client to trust me on it. That takes a big leap of faith for a client, and some careful planning of my words – I want a client to understand what their money is being invested in and I want them to know the why and how of what we’re doing.

Fireworks saved my life.

No, not really. But it’s pretty fantastic. I was a Photoshop girl. 100%. I’d taken a class on Fireworks back when it was still owned by Macromedia but I never used it afterwards. I went to college and started cheating on Photoshop with Illustrator; until finally it was so obvious to Photoshop I couldn’t hide it anymore and I had to declare my love for Illustrator for the world to know. Then a weird thing happened, I started working at Caxiam and Brian was working in Fireworks. I asked him a bit about it and after just one day of working with graphics in it I was sold. Sold on a new love, Fireworks. While Illustrator and Photoshop are still incredible programs in their own regard, Fireworks just fits so easily and works seamlessly when designing for the web. I’m totally in love with Fireworks. Does this make Fireworks a home wrecker? Perhaps. Though I still use Photoshop for photo manipulation, poor Illustrator has been pushed entirely to the side. Whether my choice was kind or not, Fireworks is AMAZING and it’s the program I’m going to stick with.

Export Solutions tasked our team with updating their Web presence. This required a new front-end design, a new back-end Content Management System, and integration with a third party e-commerce system. After completing our recent launch, we’d like to share the results of our team’s hard work.

Design

One of the challenges was educating visitors on exactly what Export Solutions does. The company has always contended with a certain level of confusion from prospective customers on exactly what they offer. We aimed to – upon first arriving at the site – immediately answer 3 very important questions as clearly as possible:

1. In general, what do you do (the big picture)?
2. Specifically, what products and services do you offer?
3. What companies have you helped in the past (to communicate credibility)?

Careful consideration had to be made to type of imagery chosen to not confuse the message of what their core competencies are and what they offer.

For the design, we wanted to show the client a few concepts – each with a very different look and feel – to gauge which direction best spoke into their business. We showed the client two initial concepts to kick things off:

Concept 1

Concept 2

After review and discussion, we discovered the client preferred more of a light-on-light color scheme, and a layout that was more traditionally corporate. We returned to the drawing board to produce the following, which we offered with a variety of accent color options:

Concept 3

With some minor tweaks, the client was extremely happy with the results and we received an enthusiastic approval to move forward with development.

Site Development

There are several key areas of the site that are custom designed and developed for Export Solutions needs. Here are a few highlights of what we built:

Products are presented in a list/detail view. Details include description, technical specs, sample pages, and pricing and purchase information. All are client managed and tie into a third party e-commerce system.

A full list of clients that have worked with Export Solutions is maintained in the CMS and presented in a visually pleasing format.

Industry news: this is built automatically using various industry RSS feeds, as well as any articles the client wishes to add manually themselves.

Content Management

For content management, Caxiam Group turned to the excellent Contao CMS. In addition to its well-written core, solid development framework, and great performance, the Contao CMS also allows us to create a highly-customized back-end user experience without the cost of a fully-customized solution. With each site we roll out, we discover more and more ways to tailor it to our specific needs. Here are a few of the customized features we built for Export Solutions:

As opposed to wrestling with a cumbersome, all-encompassing WYSIWYG editor or shoehorning everything into a customized “blog post” format,  a series of custom-built modules gives the client direct access to manage various site features, each with a uniquely tailored interface.

An example of editing a custom module. Here, the client is able to manage the clients that appear on their website, choosing a name, link, logo, a toggling visibility options to control appearance on various areas of the site. On the frontend, this information is automatically formatted and images are resized on the fly to maintain a consistent look and feel.

Conclusion

We really enjoy working with Export Solutions and appreciate their business. We hope the results of our collaboration reflect our fruitful relationship.

Tyson Willey joins us as an experienced software developer with front-end development skills. For the past several months Tyson has been learning our B2B E-Commerce website framework and developing a custom solution for a client in Washington D.C. As this project nears launch he will begin working on two other custom B2B E-Commerce web solutions for large wholesale distributors in the Orlando / Tampa area. All projects had undergone design and front-end development phases prior to his arrival. He was delivered a client approved, front-end prototype and was thrilled to begin the software development process with such a clean starting point. Tyson is deliberate, detail oriented and extremely focused. Welcome aboard Tyson!

Luis Camilo joins us as an experienced software developer with additional skills in Linux server administration. Luis has been tasked with supporting some of our largest clients’ production applications by way of routine maintenance and large scale enhancements. In just two months with Caxiam Group Luis has already performed several major enhancements on large B2B E-Commerce websites for wholesale distributors. He is slowly working his way into our custom application development side and learning the ins and outs of several high-traffic sites. Luis is reliable and bright – able to work backwards through e-commerce sites and custom applications that he did not originally develop and make sense of all the pieces. Welcome aboard Luis!

Zach Stevenson joins us as a rookie software developer right out of Full Sail’s web development program and brings a wide array of skills perfect for supporting everyone on the team. Zach has worked on websites, custom applications, and several of our many B2B E-Commerce websites. He has performed website maintenance, assisted on large enhancements to custom applications and even built a smaller custom web application from scratch all by himself. Zach brings energy, a positive attitude, and a strong work ethic to the team. He is growing as a developer with each passing week. Welcome aboard Zach!

As far as new work goes, we are happy to announce recent contract signings from clients in Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Flemington New Jersey and Palm Bay. We have signed multiple custom website projects, B2B E-Commerce projects and custom application development projects which touches on three of our four core offerings. Awesome!

We’ve officially been operating out of our new Altamonte Springs location for six months now and couldn’t be happier. We’re still putting the finishing touches on our new space but it definitely feels like home. Believe it or not we are already considering office expansion as our team is now comprised of 11 full time employees and 2 part time contractors. While we are hoping to avoid expansion in the late months of 2010 we are excited about the possibilities 2011 will bring!

Stay tuned for more news on additional hires, new projects and site releases!

Jim is a recent Full Sail grad and brings with him a wave of new technology to add to our existing web development offerings. He is proficient in PHP, ColdFusion, JavaScript, XHTML/CSS, MySQL, SQL Server, jQuery, Linux Server Administration and a big list of other technologies but is quick to remind all who will listen that he is first and foremost an object oriented web programmer who simply will not allow himself to be defined by a specific technology or platform.

We knew Jim was a good fit early in the game when he was able to convince our team to change version control systems, AJAX frameworks and explain in detail the benefits of the nginx URL re-writing engine.

While his gaming skills leave much to be desired he has been a great addition to the team over the past three months. We hope to have Jim with us for the long haul and look forward to his growth as an application developer object oriented web programmer!

Welcome aboard Jim Pruetting!

Since that time the site has evolved into a comprehensive resource for people to find true meaning and happiness in their lives, and Caxiam Group’s relationship with Paul has evolved into that of a true friend to the team. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Paul, and are proud to present some of the results of our relationship.

Custom Design

It was important for us to create a design that matched Paul’s message. We shot for a look that was calm, light and uplifting, while at the same time remaining clean and easy to navigate. Here are a few screenshots of some key areas:

Paul’s Home Page acts as a portal directing new and existing visitors
to the areas they are looking for.

The “What Is It?” page sums up the purpose of the site to new visitors.

We created a custom Flash assessment to help new visitors determine
where they are in the Sacred Path, Joyful Journey process.

WordPress Integration

Working on Dr. Paul Dyer’s site has presented some unique challenges that motivated us to learn the inner workings of WordPress’s API. Much of the site is driven on custom programming elements that we feel really stretch the capabilities of WordPress as a CMS platform. Here are a couple examples:

In addition to a custom, tabloid-style layout, custom queries were relied up heavily
to pull supporting content in from other areas of the site.

Paul offers tools to help users along with their Sacred Path, Joyful Journey process. These tools are categorized under one of the three stages of the process, then further categorized by type of tool. Each type is marked by an icon, offering users a clear visual indicator.

Admin Interface

As the project evolved, it was clear that in order for WordPress to continue to be an effective solution, we needed to expand the capabilities of the platform – content no longer fell into the simple post vs. page model. In this regard, the More Fields plugin has been vital. Here’s how we were able to leverage it:

Custom Post Types

More Fields allowed us to create additional categories to organize content. No need to wade through hundreds of posts – Paul’s content is neatly separated into a set a several categories:

Custom Content Boxes and Fields

WordPress’s support for custom fields is a nice addition, but it’s out-of-the-box interface tends to be unwieldy and unintuitive for client use. More Fields allowed us to present custom fields in a clean interface with professional-looking fields that could be logically grouped into collapsible boxes. Additionally, it allowed us to hide WordPress elements Paul didn’t need to use, keeping things uncluttered and relevant:

To top things of, we also made use of the Admin Menu Editor plugin to more logically rearrange and organize the WordPress admin links.

It has been announced that WordPress 3.0 will offer support for custom post types out of the box, so we look forward to trying it out and seeing how the two solutions compare.

Though we sincerely appreciate recognition from such organizations, one of the true motivators for our team is really the recognition that comes directly from our clients. When our customer’s expectations have been exceeded and they are demonstrative about it, a warm smile is put on our face that a small trophy cannot replicate (though we do like shiny things to place in our new office).

Today the Caxiam team received this handwritten Thank You note from one of our Wholesale Distributor clients located in Indiana. Joe & Will helped shape this custom ecommerce website from the ground up, and provided exceptional customer care throughout the length of development.

Along with the above letter from the Classic President & team, Will was gifted a box of chocolates (that unfortunately for him, I got my hands on) and a board game for Joe. Awesome!

So what evoked such gracious gifts? Glad you asked.

We provided Classic Products with our custom ecommerce development services to build a retail shopping solution that interfaces with their existing wholesaler order and inventory management system (PRISM). The scalable solution gives Classic’s Custom Imprint division the ability to offer a retail shopping experience for their partners. Those partners can then provide their own employees with custom imprint clothing/accessory online ordering.

www.usicstore.com

Our ecommerce solutions are never boxed or off the shelf. We don’t implement a cookie-cutter solution nor do we believe that this type of web technology works for customers with unique needs. Custom Ecommerce Design and Development is about understanding the inherent needs of a business, and then customizing features and tools to meet those online needs. In Classic’s case, they needed a partner that understood their Embroidery Division intimately and then could build a solution to maximize their value to Classic’s partners.

We know how to make our customers happy, and apparently they’ve discovered that handwritten Thank You notes, board games and chocolates keep us producing solid work.

Learn more about Caxiam’s Ecommerce Solutions or Contact Caxiam Group today to learn more