Virtual Communities, Inc.

Early Generation Community Portal & Social Platform

IA/UX, Creative Lead: Martin Manuel

Opportunity
SoutheastTexas.com is the flagship project of Virtual Communities, Inc. (VCI). The website is a local community portal for the Southeast Texas area, and in 1999 it was still in early development. Although the site was live and boasted heavy traffic, the business model to generate revenue was still coming together. In 2000, VCI devoted heavy resources to drive SoutheastTexas.com to the next level.

Discovery
Our team was comprised of strategic leadership, gifted programmers, user experience specialist and interface designers. The working atmosphere was open to allow cross-pollination between different disciplines. The collaboration produced valuable insight on information architecture, content management and usability of the website for both front and back-end users. Core concerns were preserving the existing audience as well as growing to produce traffic statistics that would rival circulation figures of traditional media. This would attract local advertising dollars and monetize the audience we served.

Solution
We embarked on a ground-up rebuild of the entire website from the user interface to the database structure and content management system. We focused our energies first on the most popular sections of the website such as the classified ads, singles club, job seek and real estate. Inspired by a section's core function, we designed and developed a unique interface for each. In addition, the end user had the ability to manage their listings in all sections via a single user profile. Targeted advertising opportunities were incorporated into each section of the website with rates based on section traffic. After a year and a half of heavy development and design, we officially launched the new SoutheastTexas.com in late 2001.

Result
The user base responded positively to the profile-based experience, and advertisers were drawn to the focused and cost-effective opportunities we presented. VCI partnered with other communities in the region to successfully deploy similar websites. I left the team in 2003, but VCI's core product is still based largely on our efforts.