TechStars is an organization that accepts 10 startup companies every summer and offers seed funding, mentorship, and great connections. Slice of Lime is a 2008 TechStars sponsor and we will be offering our time to each of the accepted companies to talk about their web strategy, design, and development. Additionally, we were brought on to create a new website for TechStars.

We started the project by sitting down with David Cohen, the founder of TechStars, and discussing the overall strategy and target demographic of the website. It was clear that a strong call to action to apply was the most important. Featuring the amazing TechStars mentors and organization details were a close second. We also felt it was important to use pictures from the previous year to help show what the summer is really like. We decided to stay away from polished photos and leaned towards photos showing the 2007 TechStars in action.

We established a simple information architecture and spent time refining the homepage wireframe, the most important page of this site.

Since one of David’s requirements was to manage the content on most of the pages, we agreed that WordPress would be the best tool for the job.

Slice of Lime configured WordPress so that David could manage mentors, for example, in one place. The website would then instantly create an individual mentor page, a page that listed ALL of the mentors, and a scrollable mentor list on the homepage.

Leveraging the same features of WordPress that we used for mentors, Slice of Lime configured WordPress so that David could also manage previous TechStars companies. With a few clicks, company descriptions, images, Flickr photos, graduation year, RSS feeds, and even Slice of Lime’s job listing application, TopShelf, can be added to the site.

The site was fun to work on and reinforced our appreciation for WordPress as more than just a blogging tool. We’re looking forward to getting to know the new 2008 TechStars!

Posted in B2B, B2C, Technology, Web, Work