Big Ideas for your web site ...

Here's an overview of some of the ways you can make your web site really work for your business. From pulling in leads for your sales team to enabling financial transactions and conducting business online as an alternative to your brick-and-mortar storefront, your web site should be an active part of your business. Keep in mind that these are some broad concepts, and the best way to apply them on your website is an open-ended subject.

CMS - Content Management Systems

Content Management is a broad concept that could mean a number of things to your company. In a nutshell, a CMS handles the process of publishing information that is important to your business. The idea is to take a document from the original author to its final destination, while simplifying steps of delivery, approval, and formatting. An example of a simple application of a CMS would be an easy to use back-end interface on your website which allows you to update elements of your site that change regularly, such as a news or links page--without the need for any web programming knowledge. A more complex system, on the other hand, could incorporate version/revision tracking, linking revisions to the author responsible for them, handle delivering the document into the appropriate hands for approval and processing it appropriately, publishing the document from staging to live servers, and more.

E-Commerce / Shopping Carts

Technically, any website that attempts to earn a profit is engaging in e-commerce, but for our purposes, we're talking about selling products and handling financial transactions through your web site, either at a business-to-business or business-to-consumer level. There are many ways to approach this, and we have experience to guide you to the right solution for your web store. Whether you need a simple PayPal web interface, an out-of-the-box shopping cart solution such as osCommerce, or a completely custom designed web shop, we've seen them all, and we can employ the right one that will be a success for your business. Oh, and don't forget that in today's digital marketplace, not all that can be sold is tangible. Modern shopping cart solutions can handle digital downloads such as music, pictures, important information, service subscriptions, and more.

Payment Gateway / Merchant Account Interface

A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider that processes financial transactions for your business. When you want to accept a payment through your web site (or brick-and-mortar storefront for that matter,) the site sends a request through a secure SSL connection to the payment gateway. The payment gateway then forwards the request to the issuing bank, and simultaneously does a number of fraud detection checks, such as geo-location, velocity pattern analysis, delivery address verification, and AVS checks. The payment gateway then sends back a response with the fate of the payment (approved or declined) along with an explanation, transaction numbers and other important information. On average, the whole process is complete in 2-3 seconds.

This may sound very complicated, but the behind-the-scenes programming language of payment gateway interfaces is second nature to us, and we can put it to use securely and effectively to serve your website. We recommend making as many payment options available to your customers as possible, such as credit card, PayPal, and ACH bank drafts. We can integrate these payment methods into your web store, or design a standalone payment portal, so that an existing customer could make a payment for services rendered.

Contact Forms/ Request For Quotation Forms

Making the initial contact with your customer can be the single most important step for your business. That's why it's so important that your potential customers have the opportunity available to communicate with you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Let your website act as your representative to gather the contact information that is so crucial to your company, using a custom designed contact or request for quotation (RFQ) form. Besides, clicking a few check-boxes to tell you services they may be interested in and request more information is often more appealing to someone who might otherwise not be ready to speak with you directly.

Interactive Application Forms

Filling out tedious paperwork isn't fun for anyone, and processing and filing that information takes valuable man-hours. Providing a faster and easier alternative can put your company ahead of the competition. If your business requires gathering a significant amount of information from your clients, such as insurance, loan, or employment applications, you can save time and offer a greater level of convenience by providing online versions of your forms. By taking advantage of server-side and client-side programming technologies, we can develop "smarter" versions of your forms that will interact with the client in real time, guiding them through the process and asking only for information that is relative to their specific scenario. The information can then be filed into a database for later use and processing, or instantly emailed to your inbox.

Dynamic Web Calendar

A dynamic, database driven calendar system is a great way to keep you clients involved and up-to date with your company. Updating is a snap - using a back-end administrative utility, you can maintain the calendar with no need for HTML or other coding knowledge. Along with displaying your events in a monthly or weekly calendar format, the next upcoming event can be automatically posted on your home page or elsewhere on the site. Your events can be further organized and categorized, and searchable for easy access. The events in the database can even be published to an RSS feed for syndication to other online resources outside of your main web site. An online calendar is perfect for any organization that holds public functions such as performances, networking meet-and-greets and fundraisers, or to announce special sale periods for your shop.

Email Newsletters / Client Management

Staying in touch with your existing client-base will keep them coming back to your web site and improve your repeat sales. Your web site can file away any email address it receives and merge them together with your existing customer database. The email newsletter system allows your database to store clean and elegant html-based email templates to use over and over, or you can create an html document of your newsletter and upload it to the email system through an easy web-based utility. Combine easy client management and professional looking email templates that extend your company's pre-existing image, and you can reach out to your customers easier than ever, keeping your brand fresh in their minds and ensuring they will keep coming back to your business.

Search Engine Submission / Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a complex and ever-changing art that can be difficult to understand, is nearly impossible to master, and can make a HUGE difference in the success of your web site. Granted, traditional elements such as "meta" keywords and page descriptions still weigh heavily on you search listings, but more and more search engines are leaning towards much more involved systems of ranking the pages of your site, and the "keyword stuffing" that used to give you great search results can now hurt your positioning considerably. Although you can always pay for "sponsored links" on major search engines and get the clicks you want, tuning your site's pages to optimize their Page Rank can give you the same results without eating away at your web advertising budget.