| AUSTIN,
TX. – Aug. 9, 2005
– SiteGoals LLC., a website
development company based in
Austin, TX., announced the completion
and launch of a fully automated
tutoring management system for
the House of Tutors (www.houseoftutors.com),
an Austin based tutoring and
test prep company.
“House of Tutors has
a twenty-five year history providing
quality tutoring and test prep
in the Austin area, and they
were feeling like it was time
to embrace the web by expanding
out their services and automating
the search and scheduling of
tutors” said Simon Erich,
co-founder of SiteGoals LLC.
“We were approached by
House of Tutors founder and
President Hussain Malik, and
his son and head of Business
Development Aabir Malik. They
were looking for a fresh look
for their internally developed
website and also wanted to find
a partner that could help them
develop a complex scheduling
system to allow them to manage
a much larger volume of tutors
nationwide. We worked closely
with Aabir for several months
to determine the features and
functionality to link up tutors
and students so that UT students
would find good UT tutors based
on their grade level and knowledge,
and would be able to book their
services in real-time.”
Said Erich.
“We went into this with
an idea of what we wanted to
accomplish but really had no
specific thoughts on exact functionality
or how complicated this whole
process could be. SiteGoals
helped dissect the whole process
and put together an extremely
user-friendly engine to allow
tutors to sign-up, fill in their
profile and availability and
get tutoring leads through the
engine. Conversely, students
can sign-up and search for matching
tutors in their area. If a student
can’t find what they’re
looking for then they can send
out a tutoring request which
will automatically notify qualified
tutors. As simple as it sounds
there are a lot of subtleties
that make this a fairly complex
process with a lot of room for
error and misunderstandings.
In the end we developed a robust
closed-loop system that tracks
all messaging between the two
parties and establishes consequences
for failed appointments and
generally bad practices that
are possible in these sort of
circumstances.” Said Aabir
Malik, House of Tutors Business
Development.
The House of Tutors Tutoring
Scheduler is currently in live
beta testing in the San Marcos
area and is eventually slated
to expand throughout Texas,
and then nationwide. In addition
to the scheduling engine SiteGoals
re-thought and developed an
entirely new web presence for
the company. “More than
just re-designing the website
we really had to determine their
audiences and figure out how
to speak directly to them so
they understood what House of
Tutors could do for them.”
Said Mark Hill, SiteGoals co-founder.
“We wanted to make the
process of getting test prep
and tutoring clean and simple,
which I feel like we achieved.
The real test will be in the
coming months once school starts
back up and students begin using
the website and scheduler in
a much larger volume.”
Said Hill.
SiteGoals was founded in 2003
by Simon Erich, an expert in
design and user interface for
such clients as Citigroup, HBO,
and Mastercard International
and Mark Hill, an experienced
web entrepreneur and programmer.
SiteGoals specializes in high-quality
web development based around
marketing and usability principals.
Established at the beginning
of 2004, SiteGoals plans on
bringing the high-end web development
services of enterprise level
agencies to the small business
market, creating well designed,
highly usable yet affordable
websites for everyone.
For more information about
the SiteGoals LLC. Visit their
website at www.sitegoals.com
or contact their offices at
(512) 474-2025.
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