Following is a sample list of website services provided by Wordsmith International. The list is non-exhaustive, so Contact Us for a no obligation, personalized consultation.
1. MANAGEMENT SERVICES
1.a Experienced Project Manager
An experienced liaison to carefully coordinate the efforts of communication and marketing professionals on your behalf comes standard with our services. This role is critical in the success of any website endeavour because it is important that all parties involved understand project requirements and expectations. Think of your Project Manager primarily as a linguist, communicating your wants and needs to professionals in terms they relate to. You don’t need a degree to get what you want because your dedicated Project Manager is here for that reason.
2. RESEARCH SERVICES
2.a Keyword Analysis
A highly recommended part of the website development process as organic traffic to your website, that is traffic from search engines, increases the more the copy and code on your website is effectively crafted according to terms people are actually using to search for you. A Keyword Analysis identifies these search terms so that your site can be programmed and written for with generating traffic in mind.
2.b Customer Profile
Knowing who your customers are is an important part of communication and marketing in general. As it relates to your effectiveness on the Internet, a Customer Profile can help us to identify appropriate marketing strategies for your website as well. As demographics differ, so too should the strategies you implement to reach out to your customers and sell them on buying and using your products and/or services, or just plain visiting your website.
2.c Google AdWords Competition Analysis
Google AdWords can be a powerful way to drive relevant traffic to your website. Unlike organic traffic generating strategies, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google AdWords can deliver visitors to your website right away and consistently while organic traffic generating strategies are implemented over time. Knowing which keywords are worth bidding on and how best to craft your ads improves results.
2.d Setup of Website Analytics
Website Analytics tells you a great deal about your website’s traffic. They allow you to track how many unique visitors access your website, the average time they spend on your website, what websites are referring them and which search terms are finding you online, to list but a few basic examples. Analytics is a must have for any website that is serious about achieving something online.
2.e Competitor Website Analysis
Developing and implementing a successful website is a lot like a game of chess and likewise knowing where your competitors have positioned their pieces is an important step in strategic positioning. Conducting a Competitor Website Analysis before we plan your website can greatly increase the chances that your website will get it right the first time around. Analyzing the strategy of your top competitors can save you a lot of time, energy and, ultimately, money. The bigger your project and the greater the results you want to achieve, the more important a Competitor Website Analysis becomes.
3. CREATIVE SERVICES
3.a Upgrade of Logo to High Quality Vector File
Your final logo file package will include a true vector format .EPS and variously sized JPG files for different uses. Additional formats can be requested. A vector file stores your logo information as shapes instead of dots. This allows for the resolution of the logo to be increased with absolutely no degradation in quality. This is especially important if it is at all possible that your logo will appear in print at any point in the future. Because it is more than likely the case that it will eventually be used in print, we suggest all logos be developed in this way.
3.b Stock Photography for Use in Website Design
A website without imagery is like a radio station without music. Stock photography is a great way to enhance the look of your website with photos that are relevant. Stock photographs range in price from relatively inexpensive to free, but do often take a fair bit of time to isolate. We know what to look for and where to find them, and that can result in lower costs 'per photo acquisition.'
3.c Custom Onsite Photography for Use in Web Design
Stock photography is good. Custom onsite photography of your facility is better. A combination of the two generally works best. And if you are going to include on location shots in the design of your website, it is best to leave the shooting to the professionals. Our professional photographers understand the elements in the make-up of quality photographs and they know how to ensure those elements are achieved.
3.d Professional Onsite Video Footage and Editing
Video remains one of the most effective communication mediums that exist today and the rate at which video content continues to grow online, with many websites now devoted exclusively to video content, attests to that reality. Internet access speeds are on the rise and hosting costs have fallen. As a result, video is today what photos were in the early days of the WWW; the difference between cool and dull.
3.e Website Concept Design and Approval
A website that meets your design, layout, and functionality expectations starts with a solid concept based on a variety of relevant information you provide at the project’s outset, continues with your feedback, revisions, and eventually your approval. From there, primary templates are developed, followed by all subsequent web pages.
3.f Design and Approval of Templates
Templates refers to primary website pages, in addition to the original website concept, which have unique components that will be used on other pages. An article page, for example, would be a key template on a news website. Another example might be a universal product or service page used for the communication of product or services.
3.g Email Newsletter Template Design and HTML
Email marketing is great way to maintain an open line of communication with your prospects and clients, past and present, alike. An important part of any Internet marketing strategy, indeed any marketing strategy, should be direct communication with people that have agreed to hear from you (opt-in). To market by email well, it is important that you have an email marketing strategy and are consistent in the delivery of your message, both with respect to form and frequency. An email newsletter template will help you to achieve this.
3.h Design of Flash Elements
“Motion creates emotion” and, in general, Flash is great way to communicate when it is an integrated part of a larger communication strategy. Many organizations overdo it and many simply do not use it at all, to their loss. Relatively few use it well. So we work to ensure flash elements are relevant, developed in good taste, and implemented properly.
3.i Website Content Copy Writing for SEO
At the end of the day, the pen is still mightier. Every effort made toward achieving your communication objectives should start with and go back to the word. Likewise, the copy published on your website is of the utmost importance to your success. This communication medium is a key to inspiring your audience and is also one of the keys to attracting visitors to your website to begin with.
3.j Website Content Copy Editing
Spelling and grammar errors and underdeveloped or poorly articulated ideas turn people off of your message. These are some of the biggest reasons for lost traffic opportunities, yet they can be corrected with relative ease. All it takes on your part is a commitment to quality in what you publish. To this end, our professional editors are on alert and ready to improve your communications at every turn.
3.k eCommerce Design
When you want to sell online, pay attention to your design. Few things have the power to snatch away your credibility as quickly as a cheap or poorly integrated eCommerce solution. When it comes to buying online, if your visitor does not perceive you as safe, it isn’t likely they will risk buying from you. Fortunately, however, the opposite is also true. Your visitors will buy from you when your design, layout, functionality, copy and so on adequately convey your credibility (and, of course, the value of your products and/or services).
4. IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES
4.a Development of W3C Standard Website Code
The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) at the direction of Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, develops web standards and guidelines with the aim of ensuring the long term growth of the World Wide Web to its full potential. “By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation.” For more information, visit http://www.w3.org/consortium.
4.b Integration of Contact Form and Captcha
A contact form can be used as an alternative to publishing company email addresses on your website and it also makes contacting your staff easier on your visitors. Instead of having to open their email program, your visitors can send you email directly from your website. Done properly, you needn’t ever worry about spiders cataloguing your email addresses or bots sending you junk mail.
4.c Integration of Tell a Friend Features
Your site has cool features and information that many people would share with their friends and family. Making it easy for these people to spread the word about your organization, its products and/or services, is therefore very wise. Some websites do this in the form of a page dedicated to this act, while others tack this feature on to individual elements of content. Sometimes, it makes sense to implement the two approaches together.
4.d eCommerce Integration and Activation
Your great looking eStore needs to work, effectively integrating design and code, so that sales opportunities are not lost due to technical difficulties. Other items of order related to eCommerce integration might include tracking customer purchasing behaviour, traffic sources, and affiliate commissions, to list a few.
4.e Integration of Content Management System (CMS)
The title webmaster was coined in the early days of the Internet to define a person or organization who maintained and updated the content of a website for the individuals and companies they served. It used to be a role requiring a fair bit of technical know-how, usually HTML. Today, however, the Content Management System (CMS) makes adding, removing, and updating the content on your website as easy as word processing in a program like Microsoft Word. Pretty well anyone can do it, and that usually makes for significantly lower costs involved in the management of your website’s content.
4.f Mailing List Integration with Constant Contact
The point of a mailing list sign-up is to build an "opt-in list." That is, people that have agreed to, even want to, receive mail from you for various reasons that you specifically define. When you give your visitors the right incentive(s) to join such lists, email marketing can become a powerful addition to your marketing strategy. Constant Contact, a Wordsmith International partner, provides a variety of tools and resources to collect visitor email addresses and create, launch, and manage online email campaigns, tools and resources to create, launch, and manage online surveys, and related offerings, including email archiving and premium image hosting services. Our clients try it free for 60 Days.
4.g Transfer of Domain to Managed Hosting
Managing your own server can be a complicated, time consuming, and unnecessarily costly proposition. If you are not storing copious amounts of data or require specialized security features or software, for example, it’s often in your interest to consider shared and managed hosting solutions. These solutions work for 95% of our web development clients and may also work for you. The end result is usually fewer costs and the end of technical hassles related to your website.
4.h Setup of Personalized Email Accounts
Wordsmith International is a company that has made it its mission to be a catalyst for inspired communication strategies that achieve your objectives, so we tend to look at even the more trivial details in terms of their communication implications, present and future. Email addresses to some seem of little importance, but we know better. Quite a lot is in fact communicated via personalized organizational email addresses, signatures, and legal disclaimers and, in our experience, it behoves you to be deliberate in your implementation of this communication medium.
4.i Content Optimization for Search Engines
The importance of programming your website and the content it publishes in a way that is conducive to people finding it using leading search engines cannot be understated. In the long run, organic traffic is far cheaper to produce and reproduce than the costs involved in maintaining high traffic levels on traditional advertising alone. Before we launch your site, let us ensure it is prepped for search engines.
4.j Manual Search Engine and Directory Submission
An essential part of driving traffic to your website and yet the most tedious of things to do. Spend your time inputting repetitive data into directories, over and over again for days at a time, or focus on core competencies? Most people would rather not have to do this kind of work, so we take care of it for our clients. This should be done every few months for best results. WARNING: Avoid being black-listed by search engines. Never use search engine submission software.
4.k Paid Search Engine and Directory Submission
Many search engines and online directories worth submitting to cost money. While we are working with you toward your success online, and more than likely already providing other search engine related services, it usually makes good sense for us to also submit your website to these directories and engines on your behalf. We’re pretty good at identifying which are worth paying for, and that simple fact can save you from a lot of wasted time and money.