WTE saw a new way to solve the Rubik's cube of creating an online community and the world's first Mobile Vendor Relationship Management (MVRM) for property managers, mobile vendors, and foodies. We recognized using labor-intensive Excel sheets to manage amenities sucked because no one worked the same way with the amenity vendor spreadsheet. A valued employee leaves, and there goes the vendor spreadsheet. Properties had to play catchup when a valued employee left.
We decided to create an application with three interdependent groups. Like three connected gears, each group would unknowingly help the others. WTE Solutions used our three-legged AgileSite coding framework described in detail on our Services page to rapidly create a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) with Login, Signup, Tracking, and notifications in a few days.
Within weeks we added a Food Truck directory, signup forms, and a blog for the start of a unique online community. A community with three interdependent groups helping each other.
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Property Managers
The MOBLZ app helps property managers schedule, vet, communicate, and report on mobile amenities tenants love.
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Food Truck & Mobile Vendors
Moblz asks a food truck or a mobile vendor to create directory profiles to attract new customers, alert existing customers to where they will be next, and become part of a valued directory.
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Consumers & Tenants
We ask consumers and tenants in office buildings using MOBLZ to discover new food trucks and other mobile services, contribute reviews, nominate featured food trucks, and receive free food to say thanks for those contributions (Free Food Friday).
Directories - Why We Love 'em
Google loves directories is the short answer to why we love directories such as our food truck and mobile vendor directory on Moblz. Google's algorithm loves "freshness" and nothing keeps content fresher than user generated content as we note on our Services - Content Marketing page.
When a new food truck creates a profile or a foodie leaves a review Google's spider finds fresh content. Community content shared via directories will out perform even the largest and most masterful content marketing teams in search engine optimization (SEO) because on the web crowds beat teams particularly highly engaged, appreciated, and rewarded crowds.
The Tech Solution
Moblz needed different technology than our community-in-a-box beta Rideology.io. Rideology is a mobile app whose ride directory features beloved cars added to the site by car lovers who've joined. Photo files of Rideology member cars usually taken with smartphones are likely to be large. We expected and planned for large user generated content (UGC) photo files that's why caching and compression are such important parts of Rideologgy's technology.
Since Moblz.com creates a partnership between property managers, mobile vendors, and consumers, each group, groups with somewhat disparate needs, had to be able to manage their accounts. While Moblz.com is another Kentico and Umbraco hybrid with hundreds of hours of WTE development sitting on top of these two robust content management systems (CMSs), we used more of Kentico's easy-to-customize, scale, and edit features. In addition, each group needed an account dashboard, so we wrote code to enhance many of Kentico's out-of-the-box features.
Why We Love Kentico and Duda
Kentico is a valued WTE partner whose innovative content management system (CMS) we use, build on top of, and combine frequently. As a result, Kentico comes with great out-of-the-box features. Typically we write code on top of Kentico's platform to fully realize a customer's requirements, but there are always features we use almost as is.
Rapid web and software development is crucial because nothing beats real-world customer and systems feedback. Systems operate differently in a protected sandbox; nothing like moving a system from a dev environment to production to discover leaks, bugs, and needed fixes. Marketing is the same. Over twenty-five years, we've created thousands of sites, yet our A/B tests (see Services/Testing Culture for more) predictions never beat sixty percent. Actual customers and crowds always beat any internal group. Kentico helps move our project timelines from fast to faster because of the five or ten things we can use almost right out of the box.
Duda is another robust, extensible, open-source content management system (CMS) that we use to build websites when bigger database integrations and automation isn't necessary. Open source is another way of saying "crowdsourced" because there is an army of developers who contribute to the "Duda platform." Tech changes too fast to manage with a handful of trusted coders. Just like with the Kentico out-of-the-box enhancements we create for our customers, we do the same with the out-of-the-box Duda platform, offering exclusive enhancements like our built-in AI content creator tech.
Yes, we are a team of coders and marketing geeks, but we tap into and frequently use crowdsourced cloud-based technology because it can make us better or faster or the right fit for your project. Some things we know, and know well. Other things we are learning, and to discover the "unknown unknowns," we tap friends, contributors, customers, and tech boards from GitHub to Substack. Of course, we are always learning because 'this is our chosen business' to sneak a Godfather III quote. It must be so to keep up with the ever-changing world of technology.