Our criteria for a successful website…

  1. Your website should accomplish business objectives
  2. Your users must be able to easily navigate the site
  3. Your site should visually capture the users attention
  4. Your site content must be engaging and easily updatable
  5. Your site must be accessible to everyone
  6. Your site needs to load quickly and be available at all times
  7. People must be able to find you on search engines
  8. You need follow-up tools to help maintain customer relationships
  9. You need to know how your website is performing
  10. You need a personable and reliable support team

1) Business Objectives

What do you want to accomplish with your website? The initial discovery phase helps us to clearly define the scope and timeframe for your project. During this phase, we will meet with you to discuss your goals, vision, and and long-term objectives for your business. Through a series of information gathering sessions, we will collect the following information:

  • What are your business objectives?
  • Who are your competitors?
  • What is your target market?
  • What are your priorities and success criteria?
  • What are your users’ expectations from your site?

Based on the information gathered in the discovery phase, we begin to develop an effective online strategy for your business.

2) Information Architecture

No matter what the task, your customers must be able to get there quickly, navigate effortlessly through the site, and clearly understand your message. This stage of the process involves designing a sitemap and wireframe mockup of your website, in order to understand how your content will be organized and how users will navigate the site.

The benefit of a sitemap is to give an overview of the pages on the site in a single glance, while a wireframe mockup shows a visual representation of variable page layouts. This is an important part of the initial development stage because it reinforces design consistency throughout the website and generates user awareness and familiarity with the site.

3) Website Design

Consider this. The average user on the Internet has an attention span of less than 10 seconds. That’s the time we have to capture their interest.

We understand that good design also needs to fulfill business objectives. It should reflect the personality and image of your company or organization in a compelling and memorable way. That is why we believe creating a successful user interface is a collaborative process with our clients. We include you in every aspect of the design process from wireframe concepts to the finished design. Creating compelling interface design is based on practical techniques, including reviewing the design with real users and applying principles of layout, colour theory and user experience.

4) Copywriting and CMS

There is one fundamental rule on the web: Content is king! Compelling design only captures your readers attention, and it is the job of your content to keep it. Our communications team will help you write engaging website content with your users in mind. This involves ‘getting to the point’ quickly, by placing an emphasis on headings, scannable segments, and bulleted lists.

Once your content is complete, we will train you how to place the content on your site via a Content Management System (CMS). There are many types of CMS’s available, and we will help decide which is best for you. The two we most commonly use are called ExpressionEngine and FreshWeb.

5) Quality Assurance

Usability and accessibility lie at the heart of everything we do. We believe that design should not only be visually engaging but also easy to use and accessible to all. In our quality assurance stage, we check your site for the following:

  • Validation with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
  • W3C validation of XHTML and CSS
  • Browser Compatibility
  • Links, Load Time, and Performance
  • Content Verification and Semantic Data Extraction

Quality assurance is essentially a subset of the overall usability goal.  After all, a website is not usable if it is not working. A broken link or a misspelled word may seem like a trivial mistake, but these errors can greatly undermine the credibility of your website.

6) Security and Performance

Fast, secure, reliable web hosting is critical to your website. The Treasury Board of Canada has published the following statement in regards to IT security on the web:

“Information systems must be secured against rapidly evolving threats that have the potential to impact their confidentiality, integrity, availability, intended use and value. To defend against these threats, an IT security (ITS) strategy is required that accommodates changes in threat conditions, which may be sudden, and supports the continuous delivery of services.”

This statement presents a complex set of security issues for the development of your website, and during this stage we will ensure that all sensitive information is protected before your website is published live. The most secure and hack-resilient websites are those that have been built from the ground up with security in mind.

7) Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is the process of structuring a web page so that it is found, read, and indexed by search engines in the most effective manner possible. There are no tricks to this process - it is simply a matter of effectively programming your website and writing well-structured and relevant content.

When we build your website, we follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and Best Practices that will help Google find, index, and rank your website. Adhering to these guidelines will help keep your website search-engine-friendly.

8) Retention and Loyalty

Did you know that 80% of new business comes from 20% of your existing customers? Of course you did. But what techniques are you using to capitalize and hone in on that market? With the evolution of the Internet and social media, it has never been easier to maintain relationships and connect with your customers on a personal level.

In this stage we’ll provide you with a set of recommendations to help maintain your online customers. This could be anything from an email marketing, to a Customer Relationship Management system, or even utilizing the social web to engage in online dialog with your customers.

9) Website Analytics

Web analytics measure a visitor’s journey once on your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. Or, more simply, how long are visitors staying on your site, and what products and services are they most interested in?

By tracking this information, it can be compared against key performance indicators and used to improve your audience’s experience on your site.

In this stage of your project, we use various analytics tools, such as Google’s Urchin, to gather information about your site and generate recommendations for improvement.

10) Managed Support

After your website is live, you’ll have the knowledge and resources of a full-time marketing team right at your fingertips. Our support services are highly customized to your needs and include anything from:

  • CMS Upgrades and Maintenance
  • Web Analytics Monitoring
  • Email Campaign Monitoring
  • Professional Copywriting
  • General Website Upgrades
  • Graphic / Print Design