Work

by Anton Zolotov

CampusSplash

In January 2011, I co-founded CampusSplash, where we’re developing awesome products including:

AdmissionSplash: Find out your chances of getting into college.
ChampSplash: Social grant competitions. Last time, thousands of students competed for a high school prom grant.
DormSplash: Dorm review site with over 8000 reviews to date.
CampusSplash: College blog.

and offer Ruby on Rails development services.

Through Autohaus Website, I provide customized content management systems for independent German car dealerships in return for a monthly fee. It is designed to be a one-stop solution for all web-needs that a car dealership has. The services offered include:

setting up a customized website according to client specifications
handling all the technical administration (including domains, hosting and email)
maintenance of the website
analytics to optimize structure
periodic improvements to design, layout, and backend

Customers can maintain their vehicle database on their own site. Vehicles can be added and modified by filling out a web form. In addition, customer have the ability to modify the content of their site themselves at any time – no waiting around for the tech-guy required.

There are two main reasons for this type of service:

Websites are not a one-time thing. Most of the work for a new website is done at the beginning. As time passes however, technology changes and client specifications change as well, so periodic adjustments and fine-tuning is necessary. In addition, customers don’t receive the full benefits of their website when it is completed, they receive them over the course of its life. Therefore, I strive to align the benefits that customers get from the website with the payments they have to make for it through a subscription-based model rather than an up-front payment.
Most car dealership websites are very similar. I am specifically targeting the independent car dealerships. What differentiates them from one another is not the architecture of their web presence, but the content. I am providing the architecture at a low cost, so that the customer can provide the content. It’s easy for me – and easy for them.

Amian-Cars

Amian-Cars is a new luxury car dealer in Cologne, Germany. They asked me to develop a content management system for their website, so that they can display their car inventory on their own site, with their own layout. Here are some of the things I did:

set up domain
set up Google Apps for all employees
set up WordPress as the content management system
found a theme and modified it to match their specifications
hacked WordPress so that Posts can be used to display cars, as well as for the regular blog
managed the translation into several languages
set up Google Analytics to track visitors and demographics
ran customer feedback surveys through KISSinsights