Designs, Solutions & Strategies – Websites
Your Web site is the key to the Internet community and the World Wide Web. Every touchpoint you have with the electronic world uses this gateway, so enhance your stature and increase business value!
Your website or portal can be designed to contain all sorts of media, in a variety of formats – text, audio, video, animated graphics, and even dynamically created content mixes based on the individual visitor preferences. We can implement social media friendly sites, community sites, and standalone sites for companies, products and services.
Through our IT partners you can integrate your website or portal with line of business applications and databases, including creation of E-commerce web sites complete with the latest security and encryption technology.
A high quality business website is a valuable corporate asset; used to communicate and advertise in greater detail the products and services that you offer or use your site to invite Internet visitors to a special event or offer special pricing to Internet users encouraging them to try your business for the first time.
CLSGLOBAL experts and partner teams in brand management, graphics design, and marketing communications can handle all of your online needs, and our expert consultants can even find more ways for you to expand your online business growth.
The keys to a successful Web site are:
• Proper Planning is critical for business goal oriented development and management of any web site. By designing around business and user requirements, you can save cost of redesign and Go To Market that much quicker. Typically, the use of pre-coded templates can allow you to prove concepts and give you a head start with designs, decreasing your Total Cost of Operations or Ownership.
Template Web Sites or Custom Designs – Custom sites can be more costly and can take weeks if not months to design and implement but offer individuality. Pre Designed templates are fast to implement but are not unique to your business. Call our consultants – we can help you find the right balance according to your needs and budget.
- Websites can be customized to reflect your business. We have used many of these template designs to jump start a client and start building a unique look, one step at a time.
- Select the proper platform, tools and hosting for your business needs and uses. There is a huge range available, so you don’t need to over architect for something that you may grow into. We have saved household brand companies MILLIONS of dollars by educating them and recommending the fit that is right for them – not the software company or salesperson. We can offer you solutions from a variety of platforms, tools and technologies, from low cost open source to Microsoft and Java based portals.
- Easy and Effective Navigation – the easier it is for visitors to navigate around your site the longer they will stay. Understanding what it means to design a quality user experience and maxize the conversion rates that you are intending for visitors (informing educating, transacting -taking the action you want them to take) is both an art and a science. We can maximize the stickiness of your site so that unique visitors are delighted and return visitors have the experience that they deserve. Out team uses technologies that not only will increase the time a visitor spends on your site, but will recognize and reward those who come back again and again.
• Optimize Graphics and Media- Graphics, Video and Audio can certainly enhance the experience on your site, but they need to be applied in a balanced and efficient manner so that performance stays high and a visitor isn’t overwhelmed. Many companies will load you up wiht all the bells and whistles possible – under the theory that more is more. A really experienced team will actually disuade over architecting – whether per page or for the total site itelf. They will defer to best practices useability, eye mapping, and User Experience (process flow for visitors) rather than simply barrage your site with useless and non-ROI eye candy.
In addition each new gadget added takes more computer power, so if there are too many the response times will be slow and trhe experience will be horrid. By delivering what a visitor wants with the performance they expect, you can keep them on your site and not moving on to a competitor. Your site needs to show up in less than 12 seconds or you will lose 30% of your potential visitors. We use the latest technology to increase your sites appearance, excitement factor, and visitors experience, with the highest performance possible.
• Refresh Your Site and Content on a regular basis- Staleness is one of the main reasons a website will be considered dormant, as if your business has closed it’s doors. Don’t think a website is “set and forget”. Have a plan to regularly provide visitors new materials, experiences and information about you! We can offer professional content managers if you don’t want to do this yourself, or are just getting started. Create an annual plan to do a reasonably good facelift – and keep the customers coming. This doesn’t have to be expensive or complex redesign – so don’t let someone sell you on a full re-write if it’s not needed. A professional performance and design assesment done quarterly should give you enough information to do a bang up facelift at the end of the year or on a seasonal basis, without breaking the bank. Our team and partner group has done literally hundreds of thousands of these upgrades since 1996 – so we know what we are talking about. By having a monthly content plan and annual facelift – you can be assured of high amortized value for this corporate asset. In addition, Search engines will see your site as more relevent when they see new content or changes have occured! (See Search Engine Optimization)
- Integrate your Knowledgebase, Inventory or special information collection and make them publically accessable – you and your company have a wealth of knowledge that you can share, so make sure that all of the information you have collected on a database is getting shared and accessed by your visitors – whether tips and tricks, inventory, items for sale, pictures or ay other articfact you can think of. Some of the best Wiki’s (Wikipedia or online library) come from internal resources or common area of interest associations that your company and emloyees might belong to. Make sure that your visitors have access and a way to search or look up topics of interest. ALWAYS make sure that you offer to help them find informaiton or assist them with more details. You’d be amazed at how many additional sales you will get. Remember – they may not know that something else exists, and may not even know to ask. Help them.
- We can help you wiht all of your integration needs, as there are simple methods and some more exotic methods to use, based on your goals and needs. As always – make sure that the message you are giving visitors is that you are OPEN, INVITING, and AVAILABLE. Giving them access does just that.
• E-Commerce Shopping carts and transactional purchasing – Your Web Site can make you money 24 hours a day. E-commerce Web Sites allow your customers shop when they can’t get to your business during normal hours.
Your business can attract new customers from all over the planet, customers who don’t live in your local market. E-Commerce web sites will drive billions of dollars in online sales already. How much of this do you want to have?
Here is a small sample of some of hte areas of expertise in our development, program management, and project management teams-
