How Can We Make Your Website Great?
We see your website as the nucleus of all marketing programs. Our mission is to design a website that communicates your brand image and will serve as the foundational tool for your business.
To us, great web design follows a few simple rules:
Establish the strategy first, determine the objectives, and then build the plan of attack. It seems simple, but great websites don’t begin with a great web designer. They begin with a great marketing mind and a great strategy. We need to first understand the “why” behind the “what”.
Make the site easy to use, easy to update, easy to control. We always use a content management system…and we think the best for just about every situation is WordPress. We have written dozens of custom plugins, like checkout systems, contact forms and custom database applications. WordPress is flexible, it plays well with others, and it is free. And…it’s built for search engine optimization (SEO). Google loves WordPress, and WordPress loves Google.
Leverage Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Our sites begin climbing Google pageranks immediately after they are launched. Our clients have seen websites jump from obscurity to the first page in weeks. How? We know what we’re doing.
Maintain or enhance your brand fidelity. Our website projects usually begin with a branding project. Why? Because our clients don’t always (read: usually) come to us with set brand guidelines. Most of the time, they come to us after having hired someone they know to design a logo for them…or maybe after having visited one of those crowd-sourcing logo design sites. A logo isn’t a brand…you know that…so why do you start with a logo? Because it’s easy, cheap, and you’re in the business business, not the marketing business. We feel your pain. But we can’t start…rather…we won’t start…without clearly defining what your brand is and what the boundaries are. Guidelines are your friend. If you don’t have them, we’ll create them for you, using the artwork you already have (and maybe adjusting it if you want).
Don’t use sloppy writing. Your website needs content. Actually, in 2010, it needs a lot of content, fresh content, weekly content, and compelling, searchable, tweet-worthy content. We’re writers. We write. Writing is our thing. Let us do it!
Have a plan for social media integration. What’s your Twitter strategy? Facebook? LinkedIn? Do you know what they do? How they’re the same? How they’re different? You need to be very clear about this…social media is not a fad that is going away. It has already affected your business, and it will continue to change the markets you serve. You have to play in that world, there is no alternative that will lead to great results. Your website needs to be focused on helping you win more business through social media.
Use web video! Google rewards sites with video. Web video is the highest form of content on the Internet. If your competitors use video…and you don’t…then Google will rank them above you. Even more important…web video converts leads. It makes web pages “stickier” and content more palatable. It takes visitors and turns them into prospects…and takes prospects and turns them into customers. We love video…it’s one of our strongest suits.
Website planning tools. We provide our clients with website planning tools to include the sitemap, home page and secondary page wireframes which act as a “blueprint” to assist with the visualization of the content and navigation. We also develop a website requirements document and timeline that is used as a project management tool to communicate with the client and the development team. Integration with CRM and e-mail marketing applications are considered in the development of the website.
