Flexible & Affordable CTO – CIO Services for Small and Mid-sized Companies

February 20, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

We provide small and mid-sized company owners and executives with technology expertise to enable and support growth, while minimizing risks. We help them save money by doing it in a flexible, affordable, and consumable manner. You receive personalized and customized service from one of our CTO’s. We engage with you as often as needed and in the manner best suited for your company’s specific situation. Whether you are executing for today or planning for tomorrow, you need a technology executive that can help you get there.

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Gamification of a Site for Frequency, Time on Site, and Page Views

February 15, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

iNetGiant, a classified ads site, wanted to increase their page views, time on site, and site frequency. They also wanted to lower their bounce rate. They had done some gamification of the site, but it wasn’t moving the needle for any of these objectives.

We took them through our standard gamification process of assessment, strategy, concept, and design. During the assessment step we determined there was an opportunity for iNetGiant to use gamification to achieve their objectives. They just hadn’t done gamification well originally. We then defined a strategy of how they could use gamification well to align with their objectives. We then came up with the concept of the Quests, utilizing their ad information as the gameplay pieces, within an overriding Scavenger game theme. The end result is the after pictures below that show the design of the new gamification at work on the site.

If you have site objectives of increasing page views, time on site, and frequency, while lowering your bounce rate, let’s talk and see if gamification would be right for you.

Before:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After:

 

 

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Columbus Gamification Summit in the can

February 8, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

Thanks to everyone that attended.

Thanks to our sponsors:

  • TechColumbus (www.techcolumbus.org, @techcolumbus) for the hospitality, support, and all you do for the Columbus tech community. Would especially like to thank Kay Shabazz, Chris Anderson, and Greg Pugh for making this happen.
  • eEvent (www.eevent.com, @eevent.com) for providing their event management system. If you are doing an event, anywhere, please consider using their system. Would personally like to thank Andi Sie for his help and service.
  • Tapjoy (www.tapjoy.com, @tapjoy) for supporting the summit and for being our partner on our upcoming game release, My Garden.

Thanks to the presenters who joined the effort to make this a content filled event. You guys rock.

  • Bill Forquer, @billforquer with Priiva Consulting
  • Marc Macellaio, @mmacellaio with @Bunchball
  • Stephanie Wyse, @stephwyse with @Badgeville
  • Pawan Murthy,  BMW Financial Services, @UltimateDriveFS
  • Bob Marsh, @BobMarsh5 with @ePrize
  • Jeff Hoover, hoover168 with @ePrize
  • Carmen Nesenson, @PromoMarketer with @BIWorldwide
  • Rini Das, @Rinidas with @PakraGames

We will be announcing some new events soon.

Gamification can help lower your bounce rate

February 7, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

One of the objectives gamification can help to achieve is lowering your site’s bounce rate.

If your current bounce rates are high, there could be a number of contributing factors including but not limited to: site design, content, and load time. If you have are solid in these areas and you are still having people bounce at a higher rate than you would like or your industry’s average then gamification might be able to help.

Gamification of your site engages visitors in a multi-sensory experience. Depending on the what the gamification assessment and strategy determine is the right design concept, visitors might see a variety of visual and audible queues to the gameplay. Visitors see there is something more to engage and interact with your site for. Heck, if done right, it should be fun too. Gamification of your site is applicable for B2B to companies just as it is for B2C. Gamification of your site can also help to achieve increased page views, time on site, and content consumption.

Another great aspect of gamifying your site is that gamification is inherently track-able and measurable. Don’t we just love to track and measure when it comes to our sites. We will be posting more on the analytics of gamification in the future.

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Columbus Gamification Summit is Almost Here

February 6, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

The summit is almost here. Two days away. Putting on an event of any size is no small task and we have taken this event very seriously as the organizers and leaders. We are sold out all of the allotted seats and are looking forward to terrific event.

Thanks for all of our sponsors and speakers. Our sponsors are TechColumbus (www.techcolumbus.org), eEvent (www.eevent.com), and Tapjoy (www.Tapjoy.com). Our speakers are:

  • Bill Forquer – Priiva Consulting
  • Marc Macellio – Bunchball
  • Stephanie Wyse – Badgeville
  • Bob Marsh – ePrize
  • Jeff Hoover – ePrize
  • Pawan Murthy – BMW Financial Services
  • Carmen Nesenson – BI Worldwide
  • Rini Das – Pakra Games

 

 

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OSCPA iPad app

February 2, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

The Ohio Society of CPA’s wanted to provide members with a way to consume content via their iPad’s. OSCPA engaged with us to design and develop an iPad app that would help members to easily consume various content types including publications, video, events, and audio. We will be adding courses as an additional content type in an update.

Here are some screenshots of the app:

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iTickets scanning app

January 20, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

iTickets, the leader in christian live events ticketing, asked us to design and develop an iPhone ticket scanning app. The app allows anyone with authorization at an event to use the iPhone to check-in. Venue staff, volunteers, promoters, or managers can use the app to verify and process a customer’s ticket. We also integrated the app with a handheld, bluetooth scanner. Larger events where a lot of tickets need to be scanned in a short period of time, a user can leave their iPhone in their pocket or on the table and scan using the handheld scanner. The app also has different processing modes so it can be used when connected to the Internet or disconnected.

The objective of the app is to be able to verify and process tickets faster and easier using the iPhone, rather than larger, more cumbersome scanning hardware. The app also empowers a venue to allow anyone with an iPhone to process tickets, improving the customer experience.

Here are a couple of screens from the app:

 

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Insight Into Our Gamification Strategy Process: Step 1 Assessment

January 5, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

We follow a well-defined process when we engage with a client on a gamification strategy project. The first step is an assessment.

The purpose of the assessment is to define the current state of the targeted site, application, or process and what we see as the opportunities to gamify. This step also includes an analysis of the state of competitors and industry benchmarks around customer engagement. A key component to the assessment is a statement of the business objectives the client is seeking to achieve. Our assessment deliverable connects back to these objectives in evaluating why or why not the current state is helping to achieve the objectives. We also provide analysis on why we believe gamification can help to achieve the objectives. The assessment provides the client and us with a foundation from which to move forward to step 2, strategy. A thorough and effective strategy can only be developed with a solid evaluation of the client’s current state. The length and scope of the assessment varies by client, but it can typically be completed in 2-4 weeks.

 

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Are You Onboard?

January 3, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | 1 Comment »

The gamificati0n train is leaving the station. Will you be on it or playing catch-up?

By all accounts 2012 will mark the broad adoption of gamification. By 2015, 50 percent of companies will embrace gamification, Gartner says: http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/14/by-2015-50-percent-of-companies-will-embrace-gamification-gartner-says/. As with all predictions, the exact timing and levels of participation are open for debate and certain error. What if it is only 25%? Isn’t that still a big enough number to matter?

Companies of all shapes and sizes need new ways to interact with internal and external customers. Gamification is not new. The adoption of gamification in a broad and strategic manner is new and is taking off now. Here’s why:

  • It helps to extend the experience for your customers in a fun and interactive way. We all want deeper and more meaningful relationships with our customers.
  • True gamification has challenge and mastery components. Customers will engage for intrinsic rewards, just as much, if not more than whatever extrinsic rewards you can provide them (we belief in both for the record). This is important because most companies can’t provide customers with intrinsic rewards organically.
  • Gamification provides mutual value. You want customers (internal or external) to behave in certain ways. Some basic examples are to visit your site more often, purchase more frequently, or follow a policy more accurately. In turn, customers want you to behave in a certain way. They want their interactions with you to be enjoyable, information, and valuable.
  • Unlike many other interactive strategies and applications, gamification has analytics at it’s core. Gamification activity and results can be tracked and directly connected to the business objectives it is meant to impact.

If you haven’t started thinking about how gamification could be applied to your company, now is the time. Get onboard the train before it leaves the station so you don’t have to run along the tracks to play catch-up to your competitors.

 

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Columbus Gamification Summit taking shape

December 29, 2011 | Posted by Ryan Frederick | No Comments »

We are pleased to announce a set of interesting and informative presentations for the Columbus Gamification Summit. We will be releasing presentation abstracts and speaker bio’s over the next couple of weeks. This is sure to be a fun and informative event.

The agenda includes presentations from some of the leading companies in the gamification space. Here is a partial list:

  • Bunchball
  • BMW/mini
  • Badgeville
  • Priiva Consulting
  • ePrize
  • Pakra Games

Of course as the hosts and leaders of the summit we will be leading some presentations and workshops. As a tease, participants will need to come with their creative and strategy juices flowing out of the gate, as we will be starting the morning by asking everyone to be a Game Strategist (even if you don’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express the night before).

We are hosting the Summit in partnership with TechColumbus. Here is the link to the event page for more information and registration: http://www.techcolumbus.org/columbus-gamification-summit-hosted-awh-mowbol.

 

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