Website Design

We design sites from a marketing point of view. We review every new site that is announced at two of the "What's New" services on the Net. It is shocking to see how poorly the sites have been developed both technically - invalid Web addresses (URL's), invalid e-mail addresses, broken links - and from a marketing perspective. Why should visitors stop at your site? What makes you different from anybody else? Why should somebody buy a product or service from you? Is your message clear? Does your site load slowly? Are there too many meaningless graphics or "splash pages"?

What do we do? First we send you our copyrighted 8-page, standard fact-gathering form that we use to obtain more information about your business, your goals and objectives. It is an excellent method to organize your thoughts, and contain sections like:

	Company information
	Company history and description
	Objectives (including a list of typical objectives)
	Differentiation strategy
	"Elevator Speech"
	Benefits of doing business with you
	Your competition
	Targeted customers
	Products/services
	Territories
	Site organization
	Promotion efforts to date

We ask you to tell us what you do, what you are trying to accomplish and who are you trying to target. Once we know that, we then develop a storyboard that will outline the general flow of the site, as we see it from a prospect's point of view. We review the storyboard with you and obtain your approval before continuing. We emphasize a clear message, with a simple site, powerful words that sell and only use graphics that will enhance your company's image.

Once a Web site has been developed it needs to be monitored for at least six months to determine what changes are needed to be successful.
 

We will review your business functions, organization structure and your requirements for promoting your company on the Internet.

The key areas of concentration will include:

	Design of flow of site and development of storyboard presentation.
	Scanning of product literature and other company information.
	Design of screen layouts and modification of text for clarity and ease of use.
	Company profile, company history and mission objectives.
	"What's New" at your organization.
	"News" showing article re-prints and media coverage of your company including what we send as part of our promotion efforts (see below).
	Auto Responder to send additional information to visitors to the site.
	Products and services to include product images, detailed descriptions, prices and ordering information.
	On-line interactive Order Form and the order/information processing requirements.
	Survey/Feedback form and the information needed.
	Site-related e-mail processing.
	Visitor counts.
	Modifications and maintenance of site including changes, additional information, deletions and other such functions.

Based on our review, we will design, create and implement a fully interactive World Wide Web site, applying those functions that are necessary for your organization. This will include all required graphic design to create an "electronic" feeling that is representative of your company's culture while being highly functional in delivering both information and the ability to conduct business quickly and effectively.

The site will be developed using widely accepted standards to assure that the broadest audience will have easy access. Where leading edge standards can co-exist with current standards both will be implemented. All design, development and implementation will be done striving for the highest possible levels of reusability.

For a Web site to be successful, you need to promote it, just as you would with any off-line business. Today, merely developing a site and waiting for visitors does not work. Hence, we developed and copyrighted our "7 Steps to a Successful Promotion Campaign" that includes:

1. Develop a unique "Differentiation Strategy" program which will propel your firm out of the area we call "the brilliant shade of gray." All firms are basically the same. The trick is to develop a strategy that will give the public the perception that you are different in a way that is meaningful to them. You may be well-known off-line, but on the Net, everybody is the same -- the size of a 14" monitor.
2. Create a series of auto responders to be used effectively with visitors to your site. Everything on the Net is instantaneous. You cannot think about preparing a response to a visitor. Rather you need to have well-defined responses, which are automatically sent to visitors, for which you follow up within 48 hours.
3. Submit your site to 1,000+ search engines -- manually for the top search engines; automatically for the others. We develop an on-going "deep submit" submission service, with the goal being to get you in the top positions on the lists.
4. Another unique aspect of the Net is "newslists" which are networking groups where people gather to discuss issues pertinent to them. There are over 300,000 newslists available. We will find those that would benefit your type of business, and recommend you joining the groups for exposure.
5. Develop a series of  broadcast communiques to be faxed or e-mailed to prospective customer groups with whom you have a business relationship (not spam).  We also develop classified ads and submit them to the appropriate sites..
6. Create a series of three press releases, and, using our media contact database of 10,000+ contacts worldwide, select a target group and distribute the press releases to your specific target groups.
7. Monitor the traffic logs at your site to determine the success of the campaigns and to determine where more emphasis is required. Traffic logs can give a wealth of information, like...

	Where visitors came from (which URL)
	Where they go in your site
	Where they go when they leave your site
	How long they spend at your site and at each page
	Who refers you the most visitors
	What time of the day, and day of the week do you get the most traffic
	The most active pages visited (this can surprise you)
	From which countries, states and cities visitors come from
	The least requested pages
	Analysis of browsers used to visit your site
	Organization breakdown, i.e., commercial, education, government, etc.
	Visiting spiders (search engines)
	Most used platforms

With this information, we can determine what needs to be changed at your site to improve visibility. You may think a particular service will generate activity, and you will be surprised to see it doesn't, and another service does generate traffic. Your choices then are to improve the presentation of the service you want to promote, or do more promotion for the service where you are getting activity.

Each piece of traffic information is critical for success. For example, analyzing browsers used tells you how to adapt your site for maximum exposure (browsers react differently to the same information). Time of the day is important if you want to take your site down for maintenance.

These traffic logs would be analogous to you knowing everybody who read a newspaper, including which pages, and how long they took to read each page.

Other options for expansion of the site's content and flexibility could include:

	Limited access areas for current customers
	Multiple price schedules based on customer ID's
	Credit card ordering
	Host site on our T3 backbone server
	Survey responses via e-mail (optional spreadsheet)

	A World Wide Web site could be very productive for your company. Picture it as a sales person calling on 200+ million customers, day and night, 365 days a year.
	Linked to your information system to allow customers to place orders and go directly to your system.
	Understand the "psychographics" of your customers and prospects as you see their interests in your products.