Collaboration, planning and understanding are the key elements to developing a successful website. That’s why we work in partnership with our clients to set clear aims and objectives based on the needs of their business and their website audience.
Our collaborative approach uses the expertise of those involved to get the best results. From the very beginning we communicate clearly and regularly with our clients so they are sure of their role during the website development, without having to worry about the technical details. We spend a lot of time getting to know them and their organisation so that we can understand their challenges, goals and ethos.
Our robust process moves through the stages of information architecture, visual design, website build and implementation of the Content Management System. It allows us to refer to and meet the original website objectives and visitors’ needs when making development decisions. And to keep all contributors in the loop and working to agreed timescales we use Basecamp, an online project management tool.
We provide website training to our clients’ staff team so they are confident in using the content management system (CMS) to update the website themselves. Administering this type of website is carried out via a secure, web-based log-in which means that administrators and content authors may log in to the site from any computer with internet access. There is no need to install software and users do not require any previous web design experience. After a training session clients often say “Wow, that was so much easier than I thought it would be!”
All of our websites are built to web standards and accessibility is a fundamental aspect of the development. We feel it is more than just a legal requirement to make a website accessible, but the mark of a socially responsible web developer. We ensure that the design of our websites include features to improve accessibility for a range of visitors from visually impaired users through to blind visitors using a text reader. These types of websites are also accessible to visitors using mobile phones and other technologies.
ExpressionEngine is our CMS of choice. This is a powerful system with a sound support community of around 50,000 developers. It provides great flexibility, scope for future development and allows complete control in terms of visual design. It does not ‘get in the way’ of layout, images and branding and ExpressionEngine websites do not have one particular look. This means we can create a custom site design and adapt the CMS to match. Take a look at our work to see some of our websites developed using ExpressionEngine.
All of our websites are hosted on our own wind powered servers. You can find out more about that on our Green Hosting website.
When a client’s new website is launched we like to help give it a little extra publicity via our website, blog, newsletter, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If clients keep us updated with their news we’ll continue to help raise their profile through these same networks.
We keep long-term relationships with our clients and so after the website is launched we continue to work on how we can support and develop the site further.
©2011 Make Hay Ethical E-Media Ltd. Company Number: 5223822