Archive for July, 2009

New Everything!

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Welcome to the new 4th Dimension Development site.  We decided that the time was here for a new design and took the opportunity to add some technologies to our site.  This site is now implemented in WordPress, which allowed us the most flexibility in design and the content management features that we needed.

Over the next few months we will be adding additional features for our clients, visitors, and ourselves.

Some of these will include:

  • Clients’ Area – to consolidate the tools we use to better serve our customers and manage their projects.
  • Applications – we are working on several web applications and a few iPhone applications.  We wish to both show our progress and to provide access to some of our applications.
  • More tips and how-to articles for our visitors and other developers.  Over the years all of us have used community resources to learn our craft, we want to share and give back.

Great Solutions & Planning

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Good solutions come from us alone, but great solutions come from the client and us. Here are some tasks and questions to answer before approaching a design or development agency:

  • What are some specific goals for your online presence? Some example goals could be:
    • Spread information about products or an organization.
    • Increase sales at the brick & mortar store.
    • Create new revenue for an existing business.
    • Improve your customer relations.
    • Make business metrics accessible to employees so they can make better business decisions.
    • Improve sales person efficiency on the road.
  • What is your budget for a project?
    • Adding a web site or application to your business is a major decision, treat it like one.
    • Determine what your short-term and long-term budgets are.
    • By determining this you will be much more prepared to determine what features you need, what type of support you can afford, and what time frame you can achieve your goals in.
  • What features do you want and which ones do you need?
    • This is a great way to get premium services on a budget. Quite often there are features that will over extend your budget but that do not add any value for your customers.
    • Catch phrase features often fall into things to cut. Some new technologies can greatly help your organization, others will just cost you money.