Month: January 2017

Our Website Development Process & Philosophy and How We Build Your Online Presence

Websites are a showcase of the value businesses add to their customers. On the internet, the playing field is completely level for businesses of every size. This can be a good and bad thing. The internet doesn’t have the context of your physical presence. Even for established businesses, it takes an effort to refine your message so it can reach your audience. Successful websites involve business owners in crafting the message and direction.

We want your website to provide a clear picture of your business. Just as you would in-person. When constructing a new website we first work with you to outline your goals. We can then determine which pages and features the website requires to meet those goals. We go to work and create a solution that meets those requirements. Often the solution is not perfectly in line with your vision, and so we take feedback. Then we go and refine and fix errors. Websites are evolving and need maintenance to stay up to date. Businesses are rewarded for the effort they put into creating a strong online presence.

Base Deliverables

• Responsive site that will allow for a good user experience on
• desktop and mobile devices.
• Follow Google Webmaster SEO guidelines to promote organic
• search visibility.
• Clear calls-to-action giving users a clear path to convert (buy your product/service).
• Built on WordPress platform.

How Much Website Development Do You Need?

Build from a template or commission a custom design

• The theme or template is a starting point to your website development. This helps to keep costs low while maintaining a professional look.
• A custom design still follows best practices for displaying content online. It is 100% customizable for your business’ goals and values (more expensive).

Content creation and gathering

• Copy and pasting the existing content from your old website, just updating the presentation.
• You provide high-resolution photography, business descriptions, services, marketing content.
• How much do you plan to create vs. having us create? Would you prefer we fill it with placeholder content? You could then revise it to reflect your voice and business.

Ease of updates

• Each website we build is on the WordPress platform. This allows for easy updates. Depending on the amount of information your website contains, we can organize it so it can stay consistent. Such as one single update reflecting on different pages around the website.
• Constructed in a maintainable and expandable way. Someone other than a programmer can handle day-to-day updates and/or content publishing.
• Do you need an outlet for frequent updates, blog, or general writing that you or your staff wants to publish?

Feature Programming

• Beyond just the layout and the look of the website, we would program specific features. These might include:
  • Video viewers
  • Slideshows
  • Contact forms
  • Chat boxes
  • Specific page functionality (e.g.  ‘locations’ page).
• Who should contact forms be directed to? (name and email address)

Site Construction

• Testing for compatibility, load testing, performance benchmarks. Scalable hosting or standard hosting? Encryption or Security needs?
• Monitoring site performance, bug fixes. Site analytics for measuring the effectiveness of your website build. What do people visit and what tends to work and what doesn’t?
• Transferring email providers, and still maintaining encryption and all the old email archive

Search Engine Optimization SEO, Keyword Optimization, Content Strategy

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization is the process of helping search engines understand your website. Search engines like Google want relevant results to show in their searches. You want potential customers to see your website. When Google understands what your website is about and who your customers are, it’s a win-win. At a technical level, SEO is about creating content and using the language of search engines. As an example, it could be as simple as writing a blog post that uses correct keywords. It might involve doing some behind-the-scenes coding of different sections of your website. Sections like the company’s about page or contact information.

Is it actually worth it?

It is worth it. SEO has many benefits that other marketing channels lack. If you run an ad in the newspaper or on Google AdWords people may see the ad and decide to become a customer. If you stop running the ad, then no one will see your business. SEO works differently. We can work on your website for a year and get many searches to the top of the rankings. If we stopped working on your website your rankings would not drop. You would continue to get people seeing your website and get customers long after we stopped.

How quickly can I see results?

It depends. Some businesses see results a week after changes were made, others, it takes months. Why? If you open a new car wash in a Rexburg that already has fifteen other car washes, how long would it take to become the most popular? What if in Idaho Falls you own the only car wash? Every business’s playing field is different. There is not one tactic or one method. We do what works best for your company based on our research.

What we actually do.

Every day we track your website’s movement in Google search results. Every day we track how many visitors come to your website from search engines. Based on your goals and current Google ranking, we create a strategy. We focus on keywords that lead people to become customers. There is research that goes into setting up a successful SEO campaign. We need to look through your competitor’s website and what’s working for them. We need to make sure your ideal keywords have enough people searching for them. There are other smaller tasks like checking your website structure and website listing services (Yelp, Google My Business, and YP).

Some websites are set up and ready to go. Other websites need a ton of work before we can ever start trying to rank for specific keywords. For example, if your website is slow to load or doesn’t work on mobile devices it is difficult to see any ranking improvements.

What’s the point?

Customers coming from search engines are trying to find you and your products. They are naturally more inclined to become a customer. As the amount of customers from search engines increase, you can lower the amount of money you spend on marketing. At the end of the process, you want to have your customers coming SEO. That way you spend little to no money on new customer acquisition. It takes time to get to that point, but it is possible.