Development

Yes, our sites are attractive, intuitive, and conversion focused—but they’re also extremely well engineered. We meticulously develop adaptable, responsive websites that are customized for each client’s specific needs. We can seamlessly integrate everything from robust content management systems to third-party APIs—we’ll even build customized solutions and plug-ins if third-party apps fail to meet your expectations.

TECHNICAL PLANNING

Modern misconceptions

We’ve found there is a common misconception about how websites work—or maybe it’s just an outdated viewpoint.

“Design is the hard part, isn’t it? After that, it should all be downhill.”

Sorry, but our work is just getting started. Developing even the simplest website that flawlessly operates, reinforces your brand, and delivers on user expectations—all while accounting for nearly 15 million unique, unstable viewing environments that a website needs to operate in—is not easy. Careful planning is required along with a good amount of foresight and experience.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Striking a balance

To sufficiently plan and account for a vast range of unique environments that websites are forced to operate in, we work to strike a balance between rigidity and flexibility in our technical specifications. If a spec is too strict and unyielding, systems will be unable to adapt to changes that inevitably occur throughout the process. However, leave a spec undefined and vague, and developers are left making rushed decisions and hacking together solutions, which run the risk of breaking the site sometime down the road.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Who doesn’t love open-source? Sites built with WordPress allow clients the flexibility to add, update, and edit content within their site as they see fit—without any coding or knowledge of HTML markup. Clients are able to keep their content current by taking direct control of images, copy, formatting, calendars, blogs, and more—within every page of the site.

cms

Why WordPress?

Any competent content management system (CMS) allows users to store, organize, and publish content—all from a central interface. We choose WordPress in most cases because it’s so incredibly friendly.

User friendly

Give a website admin a clunky, frustrating, one-size-fits-all dashboard to manage and publish content on and you’ll quickly see a website’s content go stale and money sunk into wrestling the CMS. WordPress puts all the tools into admin staff’s hands without overwhelming it, providing intuitive, almost simple content publishing. Moreover, we’re able to customize the look and functionality of the dashboard to cater to the everyday needs of the website admin. Updates are a breeze, the website stays fresh, and everyone is happy.

WordPress is not easy. But learning WordPress is.

– Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Developer friendly

WordPress is unbelievably flexible and is a foundation for nearly any website we can imagine. With it powering over 75 million sites worldwide, WordPress is the most user-tested, community-supported, open-source, vastly extensible CMSes available.

SEO friendly

WordPress makes it easy to create keyword-rich URL titles, optimize meta information, keep XML sitemaps updated, and even add schema microdata using plugins, such as Yoast’s WordPress SEO. With a little training, anyone can learn to optimize page content throughout the site.

We’re not just a WordPress shop

While we love WordPress, it’s not always the right fit for every project. We listen to our client’s vision, ideas, and specific marketing goals and then develop a solution. If functionality requirements extend beyond WordPress capabilities, we explore other, often custom-developed, solutions or alternate CMSes.

FRONT END DEVELOPMENT

Due to our meticulous attention to front-end development best practices, and responsive design, our sites perform flawlessly across all platforms and devices. We use clean, modern code and constantly test and retest development solutions, ensuring a consistent message and feel—whether it’s displayed on a 27” monitor or a smartphone.

Presentation vs. performance

Front-end development has become increasingly more complex. The simple markup days are behind us, and now we’re building full-featured applications able to operate almost entirely on the front end.

Our developers work alongside the project’s lead designer to find the balance between presentation and performance to ensure the highest level of design accuracy and user experience. This process is time consuming and requires both disciplines working together not only to deliver the most elegant and smooth experience possible but also to potentially unveil opportunities for greater performance as well as aesthetic enhancements.

“It doesn’t matter how pretty your site is if it takes four seconds to load.”

– Don Elliott

CUSTOM WEB DEVELOPMENT

When third-party APIs come up short and additional functionality is required, our web developmentteam loves to be challenged and has vast experience building customized solutions and plugins to meet client needs.

We’re pretty versatile

While we love WordPress, it’s not always the right fit for every project. We listen to our client’s vision, ideas and specific marketing goals and strategize a solution. If functionality requirements extend beyond WordPress capabilities, we explore other, often custom-developed, solutions.

Third-party integration

It isn’t always cost effective to reinvent the wheel. While we develop customized solutions for many clients, when appropriate, we seamlessly integrate the power of established, third-party APIs not only to cut down on development costs but also to incorporate systems that clients might already be using, such as Salesforce, Marketo, Authorize.net, Google Maps, and popular social apps.

Working with third-party tools can be a huge time saver—or a complete disaster. We have the experience to determine the most effective solution for our clients. Before jumping in, we consider the usability, performance, scalability, flexibility, and cost of the tool or API while also weighing the stability of the company behind the tool. As a result, clients receive a stable, feature-rich, website without dropping the time and money into a custom-developed solution.

E-COMMERCE

We go well beyond setting up a secure shopping experience. We apply the same user-experience and content strategy tactics to e-commerce, which allows customers to easily find and select products, input information securely, and progress through the buying experience quickly. Additionally, our shopping carts are scalable and can expand as your company grows.

Any hiccup can cost conversions

Can you think of a time during which it’s more critical to have your website working perfectly than when a customer decides to add a product to his or her cart? From that moment on, it’s vital that not only the site functions flawlessly but also that the user is intuitively guided throughout the checkout process. Studies have shown that the speed, responsiveness, and usability of an e-commerce site directly affect conversion rates and customer retention.

During the research and planning phase, we take the buying cycle and user flow under careful consideration—as well as the client’s everyday admin needs. As a result, we build focused, informed, secure shopping experiences that make it easy for customers to shop and purchase—and easy for admins to ship and manage anywhere from three products to three million.

Some technical details

We use Woo Commerce or Ecwid to power the online shops we build due to its seamless WordPress integration and user-friendly interface. We adhere to PCI compliance regarding security and facilitate other measures beyond PCI compliance.

We are experienced and extremely comfortable integrating:

Payment Gateways (we prefer Authorize.net)
Variable sales tax
Inventory and third-party tracking
Product variations
Pricing models
- Dynamic shipping and tracking via UPS, FedEx, or USPS