services
WEB DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Standards-Compliant Web Design
What does Standards-compliant mean to you and your business? A lot. It means lower costs, reduced production time, and increased accessibility. Your site will work better, and reach more people—not only in today's browsers, screen readers, and wireless devices, but in tomorrow's, next year's, and beyond. Find out more…
Content Management Systems
Content is King. So, it's critical to keep your site's content fresh and up-to-date. The best way to do this is by having a good content management system in place. In the early days of web design, most sites we built with static HTML that required either someone with HTML expertise to make updates to the site, or specific WYSIWYG software to make the updates. What this usually meant was most site maintenance was not performed in-house but handed off to the web designer who built the site. This is may be good for the business of web designers, but many maintenance tasks should be performed in-house to reduce costs.
With the use of technology like PHP and MySQL, database-driven sites are everywhere and CMS is more a reality today than it ever has been. This means very simple, user-friendly interfaces for maintaining your site in-house to help keep your costs down. It also allows you to implement updates on your own time schedule. Handing it off to your web designer could take longer than if you just did it yourself since they'd have to fit the updates into their existing production schedule. Nearly every site we've built within the past year or two include some type of maintenance interface. We custom build each interface to meet your company's needs and match your specific skill set.
If you'd like to see a demo of our CMS, let us know.
Custom Web Applications
What's great about Web technology is how easily it can be used to create applications that go beyond a traditional web site. For example, one of our clients came to us with a specific need for an RMA system. Something that would allow them to manage all of their returned products. By utilizing the Web, we created a private RMA system that any of their employees can access anywhere from their web browser. We basically built a custom piece of software, in a sense, that we can continue to customize and add features to as their business changes and expands.
Recently another client of ours came to us with a problem that a custom web application solved perfectly. They run a small-package delivery service and we custom-built a route management system that tracks all of their customers and each route their drivers deliver and pick-up packages. It's a very robust, flexible, and easily expandable system their employees and drivers can access from any web browser. This is just another example of how the Web can be used for applications other than the common public web site.
Find out how a web application could benefit your business.
E-Commerce
During the Internet boom, e-commerce was all the buzz. However, e-commerce is what makes the Web go 'round. If people weren't buying products and services online, many sites would not exist. We build all types of e-commerce sites. From large shopping cart systems to simple order-form systems.
A popular open-source e-commerce system is OSCommerce. This is a great package with a large community of contributors. We've used OSCommerce on numerous occasions to build shopping carts for our clients to help keep the development time and costs to a minimum. If you're considering a shopping cart system, OSCommerce is a great place to start. However, customizing the system is not for amateurs. It's a very object-oriented program that's not easy to modify and customize without some solid knowledge of PHP and OOP. This is where we come in.
Let us know if we can help with your e-commerce solution.
Usability Testing & Accessibility
I think Steve Krug summed up usability with the tile of his book "Don't Make Me Think!". Many web designers skip right past usability testing, or the client just doesn't want to pay for it. However, it's a very important part of the development process. Remember, you're building a site for your visitors, not for you and your business! Usability testing is the best way to confirm that your visitors find your site easy to use. User-friendly sites get much more traffic and leave the visitor with a positive experience which means they'll likely come back.
Accessibility is also important since not everyone uses a standard web browser to access your site. Plus, not everyone has the same physical abilities many of us take for granted like vision and hearing. We need to be aware of these people and make sure our site accommodates them so their browsing experience will be as pleasant and productive as possible.
MULTI-MEDIA
Flash Production
We believe Flash-based sites are usually not very user-friendly and advise our clients to choose more Standards-compliant alternatives. However, Flash has its place and can be very effective if used properly on the Web. Plus, it's a great tool for CD-ROM presentations with much more power than you could ever muster with a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Here's a good example of some Flash work we did for some product demos:
Vulcan Hart "Inside Look" Product Demos
Graphic Design
Our original expertise began with more traditional design for print graphics like brochures, business cards, corporate identity (logo design), signage, trade show graphics, and other forms of marketing collateral. Although today it's a much smaller part of our business, we still have many clients that rely on us for these services every day.
If you'd like to see some samples of our print work, please let us know.
WEB HOSTING & DOMAIN MANAGEMENT
Web Hosting
We've been providing hosting services to our clients since nearly the beginning. It allows us to have more control over all of the hosting requirements for the sites we build. It also allows us to completely customize each hosting plan for each client's specific needs. There's no point in paying for hosting options you'll never use, is there? We don't offer preset plans, so you won't find any pricing on our site. Once we know more about your site and what you need, we can provide a custom hosting package to fit your business. Find out more about our hosting service.
Domain Management
We register and manage hundreds of domains for our clients every year. Because we manage so many domains, we're able to get much better rates from the registrars. We can then pass the savings onto our clients. Plus, you never have to worry about your domain expiring or keeping the domain record information up-to-date. We'll take care of everything for you.
Find out more…
MARKETING SUPPORT
Strategic Planning
Most web sites are largely a marketing effort to help increase sales for your business. With a background as a marketing director, I know how important it is to create synergy with all of your marketing efforts. We can help you find that synergy by developing a strategic marketing plan that will combine your web site planning with your other marketing efforts.
Search Engine Optimization
Everyone knows how important a good ranking in the search engines can help bring traffic to your site. A few years back, getting a good ranking in the search engines wasn't very difficult because many tricks of the trade existed. However, search engines are always changing to keep people from cheating and getting a high rank when they don't truly deserve it. Still yet, there are specific strategies that will help keep your site ranked well in the search engines and we can help you do just that. Curious how well your site is ranking? Ask us to run a Search-Engine Ranking Report.