Pinpoint Digital is a custom web development company. We have been in business since 2007 and have worked with hundreds of companies to build web applications that do everything from helping streamline workflows to building social network applications. We work with our clients to translate their vision into custom web applications. At Pinpoint Digital, we work with a wide variety of clients from startups to Fortune 500 companies. The entrepreneurs we work with tend to be forward-thinking individuals who have identified a need that could be solved in their industry via a custom web application. When we work with more established businesses the goals tend to be geared towards either enhancing existing web applications or building new ones that help meet specific business objectives, such as improving workflows or optimizing processes. We have built, enhanced and maintained hundreds of web applications since our founding in 2007. The following are a few examples of the types of web applications that we have created for our clients.
- Collaborating with a regional hospital network, we facilitated the retrieval of fee schedule information from insurance companies, enabling seamless access to CPT billing codes and associated compensation data for various medical procedures.
- A big data web site for the transportation industry that is on track to revolutionize how large companies track the movement of products through the entire supply chain.
- A workflow management solution for a regional water authority that needed to publish outages to their customers. This project included a complete custom content management system.
- A social networking site built from 100+ pages of specification documents with a wealth of custom functionality.
- We devised a reverse logistics orchestration system, streamlining the process of handling rejected merchandise for a leading Fortune 100 consumer goods enterprise.
- Custom content management systems and e-commerce solutions built around our clients specific needs.
- Web applications designed to provide a new product or service that an entrepreneur comes up with.
- We crafted an online learning management platform to assist medical students in preparing for their STEP 1 board exams, in collaboration with a cardiologist.
- We launched NoCodeGuides.io, an innovative marketplace connecting experts proficient in NoCode tools with individuals seeking mentorship and project opportunities. The platform was successfully divested in 2023.
Our Process
At the core of our process is discovery. This discovery process starts off with understanding the business requirements the application will address at a high level and then progressively drilling into the details. The end result of this discovery process is a formal specifications document outlining exactly what should be built. For non trivial projects our process consists of the following steps.
Requirements Gathering and Specifications Development
Requirements gathering is a critical phase in the development of a custom web application, as it lays the foundation for the entire project. This process involves collecting and documenting the needs, expectations, and objectives of the stakeholders to create a clear and comprehensive specification for building the web application. We typically have several meetings either online or in-person to extract all of the functionality from the stakeholders in charge of the project. During these meetings we talk about the various users who will use the system and what functionality they should have. We talk about use cases and how these users will interact with the systems. During this process we start at a high level of what the goals of the application are and will progressively dig deeper until we are able to determine all of the functionality and business logic that is needed. We create specifications documents using Microsoft Word and start with writing a 1.0 version. As we obtain feedback on the specification we’ll progressively increment the version from 1.1 to 1.2, etc. Eventually we’ll wind up with a complete list of requirements and a plan for how to implement the functionality.
Design
How your web application looks can greatly impact how it is perceived and adopted by users. We have multiple levels of design involvement that we can provide depending on a projects specific needs. Our design work can range from creating the overall look and feel to designing the entire user experience.
Implementation
Once the discovery and design phases are complete we have a complete blueprint for what we need to build. During the implementation phase we work on programming the web application. We build most of our applications in either WordPress or Laravel, both of which use the PHP programming language. When we build applications using WordPress we’re typically embedding the functionality into custom plugins or extending existing plugins. For example, we oftentimes extend the WordPress WooCommerce plugin in order to provide enhanced functionality. When we have an application that has extensive business logic that is not suitable for WordPress we use the Laravel PHP framework.
Software Quality Assurance
Working to ensure that the web applications that we develop and launch are free from bugs and defects isn’t just a one-time event. It’s core to our process and happens at multiple levels and continuously throughout the project. After we have done our own testing we provide staging area access to our clients so that they can do their own testing and review. We’ll often have several rounds of back and forth while we work through any issues that are found or changes that need to be made. This ensures that when we launch we are providing the best experience possible to the users. For startups looking to develop an minimum viable product we do take a somewhat different approach and try to launch as fast as possible. However, we also try to minimize bugs even when launching a minimum viable product.
Launch
Launching a new web application is exciting for both us and our clients and we work diligently to monitor the results during the launch.
Maintenance
It’s not over once an application launches. We stand ready to address any issues that your users encounter and to address any feedback that you provide. As an application gathers real world feedback from users we often add on additional features and functionality.
