Users can easily browse the site using the top navigation or the billboard call-to-action buttons. Diving deeper into the navigation takes the users to details about CloudArray™ and the solutions it provides.

To find out more about TwinStrata’s addordable enterprise-class storage solutions, visit www.twinstrata.com.

Users can easily browse the site using the top navigation or the Flash animation call-to-action buttons. Diving deeper into the navigation takes the users to details about the product offerings as well as use cases for Mersive’s current industry customers.

We built the new Mersive website using the CMS, WordPress. We extended its basic capabilities to let Mersive manage multiple areas of content and images. With their new website, the Mersive team can easily add and manage pages from a simple to use, secure interface.

To find out more about the unprecedented simplicity and affordability to large-scale, beyond-HD displays from Mersive Technologies, visit www.mersive.com.

STRATFOR tasked Slice of Lime to create an iPhone app that provides users with their signature combination of tactical and strategic intelligence:

• Critical Intel: A ‘hot sheet’ of the most significant events around the world
• Focused Navigation: Zero in on regions and topics that you need to know about
• Analysis: Deep coverage of global events – why they happened and what they mean
• Multimedia: Sharp, insightful videos and graphics
• Red Alerts: The latest on developing crises

To get the STRATFOR iPhone app free for 30 days, go to www.stratfor.com/tour/iphone.

The main navigation allows the user to quickly browse the current and upcoming Standing Cloud products and to sign up for the free trial edition.

Slice of Lime leveraged Wordpress to provide content management tools to Standing Cloud, making it easy for their team to update text and images on the site.

To discover the easiest way to deploy, manage, and scale applications anywhere in the cloud, visit www.standingcloud.com.

TechStars tasked Slice of Lime to create an iPhone app that provides users with real-time updates on:

• TechStars blog
• TechStars TV
• TechStars Companies
• TechStars Twitter updates (including what others are Tweeting about TechStars)
• TechStars Flickr feed

iTunes Customer Reviews

“What a great app. Slice of Lime did an A+ job of putting this app together. All the latest buzz on TechStars and I’ve never had it crash. Kudos guys.”

- Brandon Geiger

To add the free TechStars iPhone app today, go to www.techstars.org/iphone-app.

TechStars is a summer program that helps get a small set of startups funded and off the ground while learning from the best. Slice of Lime has worked closely with TechStars for the last three years, including doing a previous version of the website. Slice of Lime re-invented the TechStars website this year to reflect the hands-on “getting things done” mentality of this summer program.

Design

Familiar graphical elements associated with a busy workplace are used throughout the site. Scotch tape holds up a list of mentors, a Polaroid photo highlights featured stories, a torn piece of paper with duct tape shows a list of the latest things happening at TechStars. Hand drawn arrows and whiteboard markers sitting at the bottom of the design help continue this theme.

Development

TechStars is completely driven by Wordpress. Every time a “mentor” is added as a page to the website, the small photo of the mentor automatically shows up on the homepage.

Similarly, as new companies are added to the site, they show up in relevant places throughout the site without any extra coding needed. With the flexibility found within Wordpress, TechStars founder, David Cohen, had no problem keeping the site updated with fresh data throughout the year.

We had a wonderful time building this site and working closely with the TechStars teams this summer. We made some great friendships and look forward to continuing our support of the program in future years.

Gnip is radically simplifying the way companies access and integrate the web’s data for use in social and business applications.

Strategy

We began the Gnip redesign with a focus on target demographic and goals. While it was clear that one goal was to maintain the playful spirit that is part of the Gnip culture, it would also be important to attract CTOs and CEOs to Gnip’s solutions and products. Therefore, the old site’s homepage tagline “Making data portability suck less” and complicated chart needed to go (see image below).

We replaced the headline with the more straight-forward, “Data for the Real-time Web” and focused on guiding the user to try Gnip for free and to learn more about how Gnip works. A step by step animation on the homepage would help to tell the Gnip story progressively while keeping the amount of viewable text on the homepage to a minimum.

Design

While the headline had changed to be more corporate, we maintained Gnip’s fun culture through the use of cartoon imagery. In-page navigation allows users to learn more about Gnip without leaving the homepage. A character on the homepage gestures to all of the services that Gnip can easily tie into. Icons were used to illustrate Gnip’s features and benefits (see image below).

We refined the Gnip logo, added the tagline “Delivering the Web’s Data”, and chose a new color scheme to bring a more professional feel to the website.

Development

In order to demonstrate how Gnip works, we developed an application using jQuery, AJAX, and XML to show activity that is happening on Gnip’s servers in real time. This not only shows that there are many transactions happening through Gnip, but also highlights popular companies that Gnip works with such as Flickr and Twitter. The end result is a module that captivates both the CTO and the CEO of a potential new client.

It was a pleasure working with the team at Gnip. They have a powerful set of solutions and products and the new marketing website has lead to a boost in new leads interested to learn more.

From pilot projects to distributed, multi-team programs, Rally Software Development’s family of Agile lifecycle management solutions gives teams the visibility and collaboration needed to formalize and scale Agile development practices that deliver high-value software in rapid iterations.

Slice of Lime is responsible for the strategy, design, and development for the new Rally Software Development website.

We started with a strategy process around the new target demographic and goals of the website. One of the core takeaways from this process was that Rally needed to appeal to a broader range of audiences, or “personas”. The main personas that were identified were:

• Project Managers
• Developers
• QA/Testers
• Product Managers
• VPs of Development

We also decided that it was important for the website to not only pitch Rally’s products, but to also be a resource for people to educate themselves on what “agile development” really means and how it can benefit a company.

Once the goals and target demographic were established, we began an “Information Architecture” and “Wireframing” process.

The information architecture helped us identify the core pages of both the website and the content management tool that we would be building to manage dynamic content.

The wireframes helped us identify core elements that needed to exist on each page and the priority of those elements.

Once we were in agreement on the information architecture and wireframes, we moved into design.

We went through several rounds of design and candidly discussed which elements from the designs were working the best to match the culture of Rally and to speak to their goals and target demographic.

One of the major design elements on the homepage was the option to browse by “personas”. Using a dropdown menu, a user can view a version of the homepage that speaks to who they are using real Rally client testimonials:

Rally’s product pages offer clear calls to action to Buy, Sign Up for Free, or View a Demo:

Additionally, these pages show relevant links at the bottom for classes, services, blog posts, and downloads that apply to the product they’re learning about at that moment.

Slice of Lime built a custom content management system to control documents, events, and news (among other things) that show up on the Rally Software Development website.

The “Downloads” section of the website doubles as a lead generation tool, passing contact information through SalesForce before allowing visitors of the site to view a document.

Slice of Lime worked with Rally to make sure reporting was setup on each page to track the path users were taking through the site and at which point those users opted to sign up for a free trial or download a document.

The site was coded using “web standards” making it fast loading, easy to update, and indexible by search engines like Google.

There’s plenty more to discover at Rally Software Development and new features are being rolled out almost every week. Check out the site and let us know what you think. This project was challenging and one of our favorites to work on this year.

Finally.

Slice of Lime originally included mobile applications and websites as one of our offerings when we started the company in 2001. We built a couple of applications that were well received, such as “Mobile Snow”, which delivered the snow report to your cell phone, Palm Pilot, or Pocket PC in the morning. It received the highest possible rating from Palm and the Flash-driven Pocket PC version was featured in a book entitled “Advanced PHP for Flash.”

Alas, we were about 7 years ahead of our time.

Now, we’re excited to include iPhone web optimization as one of our services. To kick off this announcement, we’ve optimized our own site.

Special considerations need to be taken when building an iPhone optimized website. For example, our contact page featured above is more useful with icons that help you reach us. Tapping the “Find Us” icon opens the Google Maps iPhone application, shows you where we are, and give you directions on how to get to us from your current location.

We’re excited to announce this new service and look forward to building more iPhone optimized websites. To learn more, take out your mobile device and call us at 303.413.0701!

If you don’t have an iPhone, but want to see the site in action, you can go to here.

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!