Pickleball Website Development: Optimization and Improvement

We would like a new website for our organization. We currently have an existing website on SquareSpace and are happy with the provider. We would like to work with students to develop a new website for us. Students should be prepared to: Evaluate the existing website's function, flow, and accessibility. Create a design proposal including mock-ups, and timeline. Build a fully-functioning website. Provide training on updating and maintaining the site. We're happy with SquareSpace as a platform but would consider moving if it made sense. We currently have 5 websites and need someone (or a small team) who can evaluate the existing sites, and help us by building one brand-new website that keeps our customers in one location. We need the new site to be clean, modern, and most of all: easy to navigate. Our demographic leans older, and many of our customers aren't very computer savvy. Having a nice, clean, functional website to help our customers access our products and services, with streamlined branding, would be incredible. Be it editing the existing site, trimming the fat, or building a new site from scratch. We're open to fresh eyes and new ideas to improve our online presence. Thanks for reading!

Virtual Internship Opportunity: Computer Science

Our organization is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for a computer science student or small team. We operate several websites and have some flexibility in what learning opportunities we can tailor to the goals of your course and students. Happy to hop on a call to elaborate, and explain the various projects that could be offered. The primary focus for the student will be: Website Development - Conducting a needs analysis to determine which platform is most suitable for our website; creating a design proposal including mock-ups, budget, and timeline; building a fully-functioning website for our organization. Application Development - Selecting the best technologies for creating the application or feature (i.e. a real-time chat function); creating a fully-functioning application. Software Evaluation (e.g. new CRM) - Conducting a needs analysis; researching available options; evaluating the options within the context of our organization's budget, immediate needs, and projected needs. Application Programming Interfaces - Redesigning an existing API to simplify it; changing API technologies; designing a new API; creating or updating public-facing documentation. Real-Time Data Visualization - Creating a charting system with basic querying functionality; creating a dashboard to visualize key performance metrics of our organization or tool. Open Source Software Management - Researching potential open source tools for our organization’s use; contributing to open source projects through bug fixing or feature implementation. Database Analysis - Decreasing query execution time; Changing ORM code in hotspots to more efficient SQL. Our goal at the end of this experience is: Website Development - For the student(s) to complete a fully functioning website. Application Development - For the student(s) to create a fully functioning application. Software Architecture Development - For the student(s) to provide a solution to our architecture issue to ensure optimal performance and sustainability. Other duties the student may complete could include : Software vendor research and evaluation Assisting with other process improvement projects Unit and integration testing Responding to IT/Service Desk requests We will plan to communicate with our virtual intern using these communication tools: Riipen, Slack, Zoom or Email Student's primary contact : Kate Wilson, COO

Virtual Business Growth Internship Opportunity: Third Shot Sports

Our organization is able to offer a virtual internship opportunity for 3 students or teams. We are a small startup company focused on the sport of pickleball. Pickleball has been the fastest growing sport for 6 years consecutively, in North America. We've been approached by investors about scaling and growing our business and this seems like a great opportunity to work with business students to explore growth and expansion opportunities for our company. The primary focus for the student will be: Strategy - Develop an implementation plan for entering a new market; develop a go-to-market strategy for new products or services; identify new funding and grant opportunities and write proposals. Operations - Recommend process improvements or redesign processes; develop improvements to supply chain processes to be more responsive to changes in demand; introduce quality assurance into our internal processes; redesign incentive structures to improve employee performance and engagement. Marketing - Complete a full customer, competitor, market, and environmental analysis; complete a marketing strategy review; design a new marketing strategy (product, place, price, and promotion); conduct overhaul of our branding or communication strategy. Sales - Design a new/improved prospecting process for our sales team; design a new/improved pricing or service structure. Talent - Design a new/improved recruitment process; develop a diversity and inclusion strategy; design a new/improved employee engagement program with survey mechanisms. Finance - Design new/improved accounting processes; identify opportunities to streamline costs. Our goal at the end of this experience is: Strategy - For the student(s) to help us capture increased market share; for the student(s) to help us capture new revenue streams; for the student(s) to help us secure new partnerships and funding. Operations - For the student(s) to help us implement more efficient and effective processes that maximize employee performance and customer satisfaction. Marketing - For the student(s) to help us reach more customers and effectively promote our brand, mission, and story. Sales - For the student(s) to help us roll-out better prospecting that increases conversion rates and boost our sales team's performance. Talent - For the student(s) to help us build and maintain a productive, diverse, inclusive, and engaged team. Finance - For the student(s) to help us streamline costs. Other duties the student may complete could include : Conduct research and data analysis. Create presentation decks and assist with presentations to key stakeholders.

Pickleball Market: Competitive Analysis

It’s important for us to have a better understanding of how our target audience perceives our brand and competitors. We want to develop clarity on our competitive advantages and optimize our marketing strategy. This project will include: An identification of our current competitors An identification of potential future competitors (eg. a large company in a similar industry who may enter the space) The creation of a matrix identifying features shared across the companies and those that are different. A summary of 2-4 paragraphs describing our competitive advantages and disadvantages relative to the competition identified. This could be done in the form of a SWOT analysis. We will give you access to organizational assets to support this project such as personnel, website analytics, sales and brand collateral, and more. We can suggest names of competitors to research. Objective We hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of the competitors in our space and how we can differentiate ourselves through our product/service offering, and our messaging.