Website Design & Development
We are in the age where everyone searches options of services and products online, which means if you do not have a website you will not be found on the internet. As a result all businesses require a web presence, and both the design and the development are crucial to the success of the website.
We have all been there where we search for something, open a couple of tabs with the different results from google and then we start scanning the page to see if this is actually what we were looking for. Life is short and there is very little time in which the eye needs to find the information it is looking for or the tab is closed and forgotten – after all, there are 5 more tabs left. Which is why the design needs to load quick, be user friendly and be mobile responsive.
But the design is not everything – it is the content that needs to be well written, keyword rich and straight to the point, so that the visitor does not get bored, waste time and have Google struggle finding your page in the first place, which is why we tailor our websites around the content instead of trying to squeeze content into a design, i.e. templates. Sure, we occasionally utilize templates, but this is more a last resort in case the client is on a tight budget, or there is a template that works perfectly for the clients’ needs.
Then there is the development of the design - if not coded correctly then Google might not find your page, or index it incorrectly, I’m not going to go into too much detail here, as it contains a lot of abbreviations and tech talk. But this brings me to our own Content Management System (CMS) we built, that allows the client to update their information in a manner that all code remains HTML5 and more importantly the administrator is in control of the hierarchy of their content.
The security of your CMS is as important, as I’m pretty sure you don’t want to have Chinese watches (or worse) featuring your website over night! In fact, we haven’t had a single incident with our new CMS … touch wood! “Tap tap”.
Another benefit of owning our own CMS, it allows us to tweak it for more advanced uses - We don’t need to abide to the rules of some third party CMS. We quickly noticed that there are many clients who requested functionality that other clients need as well, which brought forth the concept of components. As an example, many websites need components such as News, Tenders, Vacancies, Photo Galleries, Feedback Forms, …etc. all of these have differently structured content and have different functionality, and that’s why we started shelving these components and made it fairly easy to plug these into our CMS.
Watch this space, as we will be developing an online quote system where you can add, remove and read up on our components.
Search engine optimization, yes, I knew you were waiting for this - Our websites are developed to be mobile responsive, written in HTML5 semantic markup for perfectly structured content, they are linked to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster, we can install all kind of Facebook tools and you can have the option to get a Google Business Page as well as Virtual Tours for Google Street View, … all of this and a few more trade secrets plus the quality of your content should suffice to get your website seen.
The Process
The job involves good communication skills and understanding of a client’s needs, and utilizing both Graphic Design and Computer Programming to create a functional experience. All websites consist of content (text, images, documents …) which needs to be served in an interactive and attractive manner without compromising functionality.