We advised caution. A complete teardown of the website’s backend could completely halt the Parade of Homes, so we recommended a series of surgical fixes to make it stable before making strategic enhancements and building on.
Presented by Housing First Minnesota, the bi-annual Remodeler Showcase and Parade of Homes events are massive tours spanning hundreds of houses and thousands of visitors. We rebuilt the software that powers this undertaking, from managing profiles and upgrades to adding homes and paying for entries.
When Housing First Minnesota approached us, the various components of managing profiles, homes, and events were split across disparate systems. Moreover, members had no simple way to preview how their listings would appear in the printed guidebook. We helped Housing First Minnesota create a unified solution for managing every element of membership, greatly simplifying workflows and improving user engagement with the Housing First Minnesota online presence.
While our client’s clients are hands-on builders, Housing First Minnesota are always interested in doing more work with less hands. We work closely with them to gain efficiencies by automating processes through their web properties, which all rely on the same database we’ve secured.
After taking a deep dive into understanding the needs of home design/build companies before a recent website overhaul, Housing First Minnesota invited us to present the latest/greatest to a large gathering of their clients. One of our designers had the room immediately, with builders audibly “oohing” and “aahing” at seeing solutions to their everyday pain points projected on the big screen, ready to be rolled out onto their laptops. Of course, this opinionated bunch was eager to share real-time user feedback, which we implemented.
Having worked with Housing First Minnesota now for several years of steady progress and continuous development, we are truly their trusted technology partner. They know we act with their strategic best interests in mind at all times, whether that’s pushing them to innovate or steering them away from over-engineered solutions in favor of more pragmatic approaches.