Inspired Environment

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Services

• Internet Brand Development

• SEO SEM PPC Campaigns

• Mullti Discipline Design

• Ecommerce Process Consulting

• Project Management

• Complete Hosting Package Development

• Grass Roots Marketing Efforts

• Direct Marketing Campaign Management

Case Studies

• The Nature Conservancy, My Nature: my.nature.org/nature/ - Following their win for "Best Non Profit" at the 13th annual Webby awards, the Nature Conservancy tapped Inspired Environment to redesign their my.nature application. My Nature, "the intersection between you and nature" is the user engagement arm for nature.org allowing for deep user engagement with the core Nature Conservancy initiatives. Inspired Environment set about to redesign the information architecture for the 500 thousand user base area. Since the redesign the site has seen an increase of 20% at the time of this writing.

• Welk Entertainment, Vanguard Records: vanguardrecords.com - vanguardrecords.com Allows Fans to Hear, See and Connect with their Favorite Artists.
  
  Vanguard Records has a history of innovation in the music space. They were one of the first labels to release albums on LPs. They also broke with entertainment industry norms and recorded blacklisted performers, including Paul Robeson and the Weavers. After 50 years, the label still remains independent and supports artists such as the Indigo Girls, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Merle Haggard.
  
  Vanguard isn’t looking for the next candy pop radio success. They give their musicians artistic license to make the music they are proud to call their own, and that leads them to gain cult followings. For this reason, it was key to have a website that directly connects these artists to their fans. Not only should people visiting vanguardrecords.com be able to listen to artists, they should know their tour dates, buy their albums, and find places where they can continually follow both an artist’s music and his or her vision.
  
  To accomplish a rich multimedia experience on vanguardrecords.com, Inspired Environment Founder Jay Meany decided to consolidate information already available online about Vanguard’s artists onto one comprehensive website. Utilizing information from sites like Facebook, iTunes and Twitter allows Vanguard to offer an up-to-date profile of each artist without having to do much maintenance to the site itself.
  
  Every artist’s page offers an experience that is truly unique, with photos, tour dates, and even a blog that the artist can update on his or her own. Visitors can find a description of each musician, listen to a few tracks directly from the page, and can purchase albums from Amazon, iTunes or Vanguard directly. Keeping up to date with artists after you leave the site is easy. Meany incorporated their Facebook and Twitter pages so fans follow up with artists while they are on the road.
  
  Meany is optimistic about the potential for the new Vanguard site. “In the past, record labels had to depend on radio stations, MTV or mere word of mouth to connect with passionate listeners of their music. I wanted to create an experience that humanized artists in a new way and allowed their fans to connect with them as well as experience, buy and share their music. Vanguard lets their artists be who they are, not what sells. I wanted to offer them a launchpad for both existing and upcoming artists and I think we accomplished that with the new site.”
  
  

• charity: water, '08 September Campaign: - charity:water is one of the most innovative non-government organizations in the world. In four years, charity: water has raised more than $20 million and funded 3,196 water projects.
  
  charity:water CEO Scott Harrison approached Inspired Environment about an application never seen in the NGO space before. The application allows donors to purchase a virtual e-card for a friend at http://www.charitywater.org/store. The friend receives this e-card via email and is then able to give the money the donor put on the card to a water project of their choice from the website. They can then choose friends from their email and Plaxo contacts to send cards out to others. The viral nature of the application was a challenge, as was Harrison’s timeline of ten days.
  
  Inspired Environment created a unique identifier code for each recipient to ensure his or her name and dollar amount stayed the same throughout. This ensured that when he or she clicked off the email into the application, their identity and donation was not lost.
  
  Harrison gave the Inspired Environment team a tight deadline of ten days to build the application. To accommodate, lead architect Jay Meany sourced out to several teams who worked around the clock to ensure charity:water made their deadline. The Inspired Environment team indeed made this deadline and charity:water launched the application in (month) of (year). Their application made over $1 million, and served as a model for other NGOs as a viral campaign that made a big impact for charity:water’s mission in a short period of time.
  
  

• Tegu Toys Incorporated, tegu.com: tegu.com - An online toy store should not feel like a warehouses stocked with items on shelves. It should be playful as well as convey the store owner’s values and personality to build trust and report with customers.
  
  Tegu Toys, a maker of magnetic wooden blocks for kids, wanted to ensure a rich experience that engaged visitors to their site. They didn’t want to show a bunch of blocks in a box up for sale—they wanted to stimulate children’s imaginations and encourage them to use their creativity. Tegu has a broader mission than a typical toy store though. With each sale, a portion of their profits goes to educating the children and restoring the depleted forests of the Honduras.
  
  Tegu seeks to be profitable while also making a difference in the world, and striking the balance between commerce and community can be tricky. In order to achieve a rich interactive experience for tegu.com that could actually drive sales, Inspired Environments architect Jay Meany used a combination of 4 different open source platforms for the structure of the site. Meany ensured the site experience was consistent, seamless and easy to use for the end user by utilizing the same look and feel throughout tegu.com.
  
  The sites flexible software allowed Meany to architect visually appealing product pages with multiple images of each block set in various inventive configurations. After a visitor decides to purchase a set of blocks, an option is presented to them to choose to either plant a dozen trees in the Honduras or fund a day of school for a student there. The website then dynamically captures how many trees and days of school customers have funded and displays these figures on the left side for current shoppers to see.
  
  Perhaps the most innovative feature of the Tegu site is the “Show and Tell” option. Tegu sought to encourage their customers to make new and interesting creations with their educational blocks. If a child makes something interesting with Tegu blocks, his or her parent can snap a photo or a video and easily upload it directly to the Tegu site for other users to learn and comment on. This media is then automatically uploaded to Tegu’s Flickr account (link?), where it helps them get cross exposure with Flickr users. Since photos link back to the Tegu site with content and keywords, it also improves Tegu’s search engine rankings.
  
  Since launching, Tegu often sells out of entire collections of blocks. A the time of this writing they've planted 5,520 trees to restore the Honduran rain forest and have paid for 917 days of school for Honduran children.
  
  

About

Inspired Environment. An Innovative Web Development Firm for the Socially Conscious Entrepreneur or NGO

Inspired Environment is a web development team with a strong commitment to designing, building, and marketing, scalable platforms based on the latest technologies and open source solutions. Our portfolio includes an assortment of online communities, fundraising applications, and online stores. We're based out of Austin, Texas and have over eight years experience working with socially conscious entrepreneurs and non-government organizations.

Our customers are not just businesses. They positively impact the communities around them and worldwide. They inspire people, and that inspires us. There is no formula or cookie cutter way to represent their presence online. That's why we build rich, robust, and meaningful online experiences that truly help our clients' missions resonate and connect with their audience. It's not just about how a website or application looks it's about how well it scales to a client's needs, how easily it can be modified, and how the audience feels when using it.

Inspired Environment is lead by Jay Meany, an expert in open source content management systems and ecommerce platforms. Prior to founding Inspired Environment, Jay was the Creative Director at Seso Media Group, a digital media agency in Los Angeles.

We seek solutions that are elegant effective and steadfast.