Services :: Strategy
Every project is different. We work smart to unearth the context surrounding your goals and construct an actionable framework to accomplish them. Our focus on strategy ensures that the purpose of your project is clear, supported by design and development methodology, and rooted in business fundamentals. One step further, we understand our clients engage us not only for the work they require done, but also for the ideas we can deliver.
Scope Building
As essential as an architect’s blueprint for constructing a home, the creation of a detailed and thorough scope document that provides guidelines for all aspects of a given web project is the very first step in the process of building your web site or application the right way for present and future situations. Scope building takes into account user experience and prioritizes what you “need to have” from what you “want to have”.
Requirements Research
Requirements research brings in the development team at an early stage to gather input and ideas that may inform the way strategy, design, and deployment phases should be planned and carried out. If the project is a redesign, an example would be accessing your database, domain, and related factors to see how data migration will likely proceed; if it’s setting up an e-commerce cart with shipping rules, it’s looking into third-party vendor interfacing and data capture handling, etc.
Usability Analysis
Reviews the needs and habits of your typical site user and sets guidelines for navigation characteristics, proper use of web standards and conventions within your unique web pages, and overall simplicity of online experience so that goal accomplishment is clear and direct at all times. For example, usability analysis of a site built to be used by senior citizens may recommend functionality for user-controlled resizing of text so that words are easier to read, as well as larger buttons and/or more simple navigation throughout the site, etc.
Persona Analysis & Modeling
Gathering anecdotal and hard data research about your industry and your customers so we can create paths to purchase and presentation techniques to anticipate your user’s functional preferences, knowledge of web interactions, and whatever potential objections they might have to certain strategy, design, & development decisions we would consider implementing. The “Persona Approach” is a widespread and proven tool in designing a web site that converts by tailoring design choices to a specific and true “persona”, rather than a nameless, aimless “user”.
Brand & Identity Strategy
As your website is the virtual personification of your company online, it’s a touchstone for your brand & corporate identity like no other. Careful thinking around the design and usability choices you will make is the best way to ensure that your site visitors will associate feelings of credibility, authority, and relevance around your offering and loyalty towards your brand. Identity strategy, such as the treatment of your tagline and presentation of your logo in web formatting, ties together whole sections and/or individual pages of your site and generates a consistent uniqueness that distinguishes you from your competition.
Content Strategy
Maybe you’ve heard: “Content is King”. Content Strategy has to do with design as well as persuasive writing styles and information presentation, allocating real estate for the words and images that display on your web page. Examples of content strategy tasks are: copy editing to make sure there are no inconsistencies in message or errors in communication; creative writing when your words need to make a greater impact; linking strategy to build what’s known as “click momentum”; knowing when to use paragraphs, bullet points, lists, tables, white papers, etc.; effective calls to action; keyword layering for SEO campaigns; and (above all else) getting to the point.
Start-up Web Strategy
We are well-equipped to service startups alongside established businesses with our full-service capabilities to organize priorities and complete tasks for entrepreneurial clients. Examples of startup services we provide are: creating logo and identity elements; setting brand style-guides: consulting on general start-up business modeling and/or specific marketing initiatives: building landing pages, micro-sites, ecommerce retail or content rich websites; and providing web strategy, design, development, and deployment services for idea-driven “boot-strappers” (like we were once).
Website Redesign Strategy
For companies with an existing web site, e-commerce cart, flash site, etc. with a goal to refresh, realign, or entirely re-envision their web presence, our breadth of service and experience redesigning websites are ideal. Considering what to keep, cut, or add is the first stage, requirements gathering and scope building is a close second. Recommended focus areas include effective content strategy and goal-driven calls to action, path to purchase and/or lead acquisition design, SEO optimization techniques, and deployment transition strategies.
Integrated Campaign Strategy
In addition to website design & development, we often work with clients to build marketing assets that will translate from the web to print, not to mention integrating design and content motifs for internal document sharing and instructional presentations and PDFs. We can build files in such a way that it is easy to reuse and restructure them to serve the changing nature of your business needs in divergent formats and increase return on your marketing budget.
Landing Page Strategy
Landing pages are cost-effective and powerful points of entry to attract qualified site visitors and foster better return on investment for SEO budgets. Cued up by either inbound links or targeted keyword searches (with or without pay per click ads associated to them), landing pages are usually simple but persuasive pages designed to prompt a singular action (request a call back, learn more about a certain topic, download a whitepaper, test-drive our latest offering) in a faster, more focused, manner than your full web site.
Continue to Design Services to see how we go beyond aesthetics to enhance usability.
