Our motto this year has definitely been "it takes a team" because to create a website today, you do need a team of experts. I ran across this article today and almost jumped out of my seat:
It Takes a Village – or at Least a Team - to Build Successful Websites and Apps (searchenginewatch.com)
A quality website or application requires expertise in several disciplines to truly fulfill its potential. Professionals with ample cross-discipline expertise are as rare as unicorns with wings. It is more efficient and cost-effective to put a team in place with the skill sets needed to execute the process, in the correct sequence, from the beginning.
[...]
A well-designed experience that offers value will drive conversion and return on investment. This is not achieved in a single interaction with users. According to Forrester, 96 percent of website visitors are not yet ready to buy, which elevates the need for thoughtful strategic planning to engage visitors in all, three phases of the purchase decision. Offering visitors paths to convert requires insight related to the core of the business that typically lives outside the boundaries of the design process.
Rarely can an asset like a website or app be successful without expertise in three key disciplines.
And then she goes into how you need a team that covers design, marketing and technology. It's a good article - take a look at it.
Here's something to chew on... would you rather go with a website design company that uses the same group of experts for each project with better control over quality and their availability (scheduling) or with a company that needs to scramble to find freelancers to outsource to whenever there's a new project?
When we bid on a project and prepare a quote, our team is involved even then. Sure, the salesperson is but our team of designers and programmers prepares the quote. This helps because there aren't any surprises when it comes back to them as a project. If you go with a website design or ad firm that has their salespeople completely quote projects, you could end up in a situation where they didn't anticipate something when it went to their outsourced design team and programmers and, all of a sudden, the project is going to cost more. You typically would want to avoid that, right?
We've been working on our in-house system for years. Setting it up has not been easy and we still run into some struggles but they're very minor now. We've been at this since 2001 and the whole goal of our in-house system has been to be efficient and deliver high quality so that our clients will be happy with what we provide. Enough said.
I won't make this a long post - I just wanted to point something out from an article I found this morning. It's about doing page layout.
Now, you'd think that really all you have to do to post something is just fire up Joomla or WordPress in your browser and type away. Well, that might work most of the time but if you're crafting something like a landing page or epic post, then you'll want to spend considerable time on the layout of the piece.
Here's that article - it's about grid layout. I urge you to just click on it (opens in a new window) and just scroll through and skim it. I think you'll be surprised about how complex doing layout of web pages can be:
The Secret To Creating Great Looking WordPress Content (premium.wpmudev.org)
That article mentions this award winning post on the New York Times website ("Snowfall") - definitely worth checking out:
Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek (www.nytimes.com)
Just scroll through that one - amazing!
This is really what web publishing is heading toward. Soon enough (maybe as soon as in 5 years), I can see more and more websites being published with this kind of page design - very multi-media rich. To do that, you're going to need a web team - that's where Webstix comes in.
Publishing this kind of content (or even websites now) does take a team. You need designers, coders/programmers (for HTML, CSS and JavaScript) along with testers and someone managing the project. This is not a one-man-shop kind of job any more. Nobody can be an expert in all those things. You need a team like we have where our people are experts in each area and then they combine to make something great.
I posted something the other day about all the technical details needed to have a website load quickly. It may be a surprise to many people how much work it takes to make a great website. There are those commercials on TV that make it look like anyone can create a website in 5 minutes... sure, you can but you're very limited in terms of what you can do and maybe not everyone out there should be making websites. Our design team is educated to learn the finer points of design and how that impacts results. That just doesn't compare to 5 minutes of work. Clients who realize that come to us for help.
Our team rocks! I tell them that as much as possible because they do. We keep the most talented people we can find on our team. They've valuable and they really like what they do.
An expert team gets things done smarter and more efficiently. The "get it" factor is through the roof, too.
I'm not normally one to brag - that's not my style but when you've got it, you've got it. We've been working hard for a long time, so we've earned some bragging rights.
You don't have to choose Webstix for your project but just make sure that whatever your choice is, you've chosen a team of experts that have worked together, are efficient, work smart and have a system in place to minimize surprises so that you get the best website possible.
-Tony
