Web Development = Business Development
Web development is often thought of as something very technical that people tend to squeeze in at the end and without much thought put into. "We just need a website, get it done" and giving the assignment to a programmer or designer will get you a site, but may not represent who you really are and is probably not optimized for your market segments. We think web development is business development. When you try to structure your products and services and produce copy for their respective subpages it becomes clear whether or not you truly know what you are offering and can communicate it in a compelling way. You also need to think about your core focus, your vision, mission and values, and try to show the essense of that online. What is your brand about? Should some activities be taken out as separate brands, maybe even separate sites?
You may already know what type of web development you need. If not we will advice. The websites we develop could be anything from simple informative content sites to complex Web interfaces for your enterprise wide applications, web shops or e-commerce sites, surveys, community sites, knowledge management platforms, among others.
A typical corporate website development goes through six phases:
- We advice what type of web presence you need. Maybe you even need several different specialized sites to fully "own" the market niches you are in - one corporate website, one community site, one informative site about your industry, one benchmarking and/or survey site, one independent blog, one personal site about the founder, and so on. Or maybe this should all be on the same site. There is no simple answer to how this should be done, it all depends on your company, the market segments you operate in, and what your competitors in each segment are doing.
- We structure your site(s) based on your initial input, previous website and other marketing materials and documentation. For a simple web (with a handful of pages) it may be enough with a flat structure, but usually mindmapping is required to find the optimal structure of pages and subpages. At this stage we also do keyword analysis, which in a relative way tells you how big each pie of your market is, and most importantly shows you the exact terminology you should be using. Not only will you increase the size of your potential market this way, you will have the perfect foundation for doing SEO onpage optimization, and last but not least, you will communicate using the same wordings that your potential clients are using. The result is a sitemap with optimal terminology.
- We get you started with copywriting. The client is first asked to provide the bulk text including the main points to be covered in each page of the sitemap. Then we or some external copywriter converts this bulk text into compelling and actionable copy. This process of improving the copy should never stop, a text is never complete or perfect, nor timeless, and therefore all websites we develop are easy to maintain after delivery via an admin module to update, add or delete content.
- Based on the type of site and structure agreed on, we design your site(s), from scratch using your existing corporate identity, or together with your prefered web designer. This includes size and dimensions, number of columns, navigation, type of menu, colour schemes, fonts, headings, links, header, footer, background, etc. We also select stock photos, and/or source a photographer or illustrator for you if the budget allows.
- We develop the site(s) on your or our servers, usually using our own SEO-friendly Content Management System (CMS) and many proven and tested components and functionality already developed, such as dynamic menu, login functionality (user and roles management), forum/bulletin board, social media integration, consuming or publishing RSS feeds, integration to other sites and applications via XML, JSON, SOAP web services, or other APIs, payment gateway integration, blog, sitemap, sitemap path, HTML sitemap, XML sitemap (used by Google webmaster tools), lead capturing and other forms, etc. And if we haven't already done it before we will develop it for you. Since we do not rely on third party products there is virtually nothing we cannot do.
- Ok, we are done, but what are the chances that your market and/or your business changes a few months down the road? Very high. Therefore the content of all sites we deliver can be easily changed by yourself. But most clients still opt for a support and redevelopment package for a small monthly fee as part of a web and marketing outsourcing agreement, which means we will be there for you to do whatever changes required, big or small, whenever necessary.
When your site is up and running we make sure to provide you with recurring and actionable analysis from a web analytics installation, so that you can see the results of our marketing, SEO and PPC activities in real time. We can also channel leads captured from the website into your CRM system, from where you monitor the status of prospects and sales activities.
Your website is crucial for your business, and should be developed in such a way that it enables business growth. Let us show you how this can be done for your business.