By Trey Reeme on March 02, 2006
Yesterday, we launched the new www.sfcu.org. Stanford Federal Credit Union. THE first financial institution in the world to perform an online banking transaction. (Can you tell we’re beaming?)
This morning we got wind of a comment pointing out, “I really like the look and was impressed enough to research Trabian. Where have I been? Who are these folks? Their corporate site is fun, but doesn’t say much about the principals or when they emerged on the scene.” So, with no further ado, here’s the History of Trabian (abridged).
We’re a small team; there are four of us, to be exact. We (or Trabian DBA Matt, our founder/CEO/face) started building sites back in 2000. When he graduated from Texas A&M in 2003, Trabian incorporated. Shortly thereafter, Chad (now a developer at successful company in Austin), Brent and I joined the team. Mark climbed onboard about six months ago.
Our initial business plan called for developing for a wide range of industries while looking for vertical growth opportunities. And before we picked credit unions as our niche, we’d been helping other non-profits connect to their members. In August 2004 our first credit union site launched and along the way we saw a real need in the industry for exactly what we do best. Plus, we truly believe in the credit union movement.
We were all born in the 80s if that gives you a clue about our ages. We’ve got a stellar board of directors, a solid business model, and clients who’ve been happy to provide the feedback necessary to keep us growing.
Briefly about our team members: I love writing. Mark loves Rails much more than he loves .NET. Brent loves drawing and being a repository for tons of useless knowledge. Matt loves business even more than he loves technology and coding.
Please feel free to ask us any questions, personal or professional, in the comments below.
By Trey Reeme on February 27, 2006
When we launched the new usecreditunion.org a few months back, I wrote a member poll question for the initial launch. It included an option meant to trick the poll respondent. I asked, “What do you like most about our new website?”
A whopping 34% of respondents selected “There’s more information.” However, there wasn’t any substantial amount of new information on the new site than on the old one. (That is, aside from having the content available En Espa?ħol along with a couple of short news articles about phishing and the new website itself.)
How can that be?!
The results
The poll received 140 votes (we only allowed each IP address to vote once to discourage repeat voting), and respondents could choose to answer “What do you like most about our new website?” with one of the following:
- It’s more modern (51 votes – 36%)
- It’s better organized (34 votes – 24%)
- There’s more information (47 votes – 34%)
- I recognize the faces and places (8 votes – 6%)
But if there wasn’t significantly more information, why did users think there was? Part of the answer lies in Information Architecture (IA), concisely defined on Wikipedia as the art and science of structuring knowledge (technically data) and defining user interactions.
I watched Casablanca last night for the umpteenth time. Remember the scene where Ilsa pleads to Rick, “You’ll have to do the thinking for both of us.” That’s a great way to sum up what an Information Architect does; well-designed IA makes a user not have to think about what he’s doing on a website.
A great site is intuitive enough for users to go correctly with their instincts about where information will reside before a link is clicked. That’s why the USE site’s users thought there was more information – it’s organized more intuitively. We did the thinking for them when we rebuilt the site. (Just try the Wayback Machine for a before-and-after view of the site.)
On another subject …
Matt just showed me the latest feature of our Content Management System (used by our clients to make changes to their sites) – versioning! Holy moly! Now a page’s content can be restored to earlier versions after changes are made. That’s huge.
By Trey Reeme on February 23, 2006
I love a good road trip (especially one that involves a Cracker Barrel breakfast), and yesterday Brent and I left Dallas at the crack of dawn to attend a lunch meeting of the Austin Chapter of Credit Unions. Over the next couple of months, we’ll be building the chapter’s website.
It was a particularly interesting meeting because Dick Ensweiler was the guest speaker, and his topic was the state of the credit union movement. If you’re not in the credit union industry, this would be the equivalent of Quincy Jones talking about the state of jazz production, and if you’re not into jazz it’s like your grandma talking about the state of warm apple pies.
If you’d like to read more about what Mr. Ensweiler discussed during the meeting, I’ve posted about it on Open Source CU.
By Trey Reeme on February 16, 2006
During our visit to Madison this week, Matt and I had some quality time to talk “Trabian.” It was just like when he’d stop by to see me in Louisiana so we could chat about growing his company.
Each visit, by the time he’d leave town ideas were hatched that would make any VC firm lick their lips – ideas that gave Jenny and me a reason to move to Dallas and literally next door to him.
It’s rare for us to have those marathon multi-day brainstorming sessions anymore; it’s especially easy for me to lose focus on the big picture when the day piles so much in the inbox. But our time in the land of credit unions and cheese was just like old times – perfect for discussing/developing/dreaming up some big ideas.
After meeting with the most innovative thinkers in our industry, I’m rejuvenated. Heck, I’m even up way past my bedtime writing about it.
I won’t go into too many details just yet, but we’ve got some amazing projects in the pipeline. And they’re not just exciting in the “We’re launching another website” sort of way, either. Plus, Mark’s doing some crazy things with Rails, Brent’s busy building the brand, and Matt’s already getting some of those ideas of his ready for action.
Oh, yeah – thanks for all the advice about visiting The Great Dane – learned about it first on Morriss Partee’s blog.
By Brent Dixon on February 14, 2006
Just wanted to take a minute to spread a little love out to all of our friends, clients, friends who are clients, and anyone else who might be dropping by to see what’s going on. We really appreciate all that you’ve done for us, and realize that without you we wouldn’t get to have jobs that we love.
So thanks for that.
Hope everyone has a good one. Remember to do something festive, like treating your loved one to a red, Valentinesy bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, or a very special night of Big Momma’s House 2.
