Website Design

The Web and I specializes in making usable websites for business. Rather than focusing on a vanity website for the business owner’s pride, a usable website offers key benefits making it a conservative investment all businesses should make.

A usable website properly implemented will:

• Increase sales of your product or service.
• Improve user efficiency.
• Control development expenses with technology that perpetually self-upgrades./li>
• Lower customer support expenses.

Usability projects have a high ROI compared to traditional advertising based web development.  Often midsized businesses can recoup six times their investment in the first year due to decreased personnel and hardware needs made possible by Microsoft and Google cloud services we use.

The most important user is of course your client.  You have to offer your products or services and policies and information in such a way that your client can get to any major destination on your Website in three clicks or less. We believe in taking the extra steps of making sure that your Website is accessible to the Handicapped. We ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act Section 508.  Compliance with these standards are required of any organization of any size receiving government grant funding or wishing to be eligible to respond to government contract or RFA.

User acceptance testing we perform finds any barriers to completing an inquiry or accessing any part of your Website.  A uniform, rapid, consistent experience will help any kind of business avoid website abandonment by readers.  Many studies have concluded that most online shopping results in abandonment without a transaction, and these barriers to completion and conversion are what we seek to remove. Contextual browsing by topic can help users find what they need in three clicks or less. Recommendations and referrals by word of mouth go to usable sites.  People like to recommend things that work.

Increased User Efficiency

Company intranets that are well-organized and based on Office Live technology can help tie together sales and contact management as well as access to frequently used documents.  Custom applications are possible including ERP level applications.  Usability expert Jakob Nielsen once stated that improving the usability of the world’s Intranets would save the earth’s businesses $1.3 trillion every year.

When people find their documents in the same place every time they work faster. Especially template documents such as intake forms and cover sheets and reporting and invoicing.  Teaching people where to find things is only needed once and then IT staff is not needed because Office Live provides all technical support to their many redundant servers, free of charge.

Contact and sales management can be centralized, allowing all users to synchronize their Outlook or other E-Mail application directly to the same set of contacts.  New clients who enter an inquiry on the Website automatically are added into the sales management pipeline as a new potential client.  E-mail alerts can be set up to alert sales managers to new potential customers immediately.

Working on the same lists avoids duplication of effort and resulting errors and inefficiencies.  Large businesses have long understood this and now small businesses must understand this in order to compete.

What should clients do?

We ask that our clients prepare a list of problems on a high level that they hope to address with the creation of a website and a company intranet.  From there we can come up with a strategy best suited to your needs.  Knowing the big picture will help us find the most efficient solution to your problems.

Who’s doing the technical work?

Microsoft Office Live. Your business reputation these days has to be managed online because in today’s market, that is where businesses are found.  Nobody uses the Yellow Pages anymore; people use Bing, Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, and often the recommendations of your friends on social networks and review sites.  Press releases can now be made online for free, and there are classified advertising opportunities, blogging opportunities, and video posting opportunities which will help you along the way.  Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Optimization are what Coca Cola, IBM, Google, and others are spending their time and money on, so you should get started now!

Microsoft Office Live, which will soon transform into the much-anticipated Microsoft Office 365, is not only a website design platform.  It is an entire set of tools for securely running your business, effectively using cloud computing on the World’s most trusted platform to replace what servers now do in your office.  If you’re a small business with no servers, even better!  Skip one paradigm in technology completely and vault ahead of your competition with ease!

The Web and I, Inc. is one of a select few developers of Microsoft Office Live Small Business.  Microsoft Office Live is the latest in cloud computing.  You get quality website hosting, sophisticated business applications, ERP integration, internal social networking, and online reputation management with an extraordinarily robust solution.  The future of the Web is here.  Get online, get customers, and take your business to the next level!

More than just a Website, Office Live includes:

• Contact Management
• Customer Relationship Management
• Time and Schedule Management
• Sales Management Document Collaboration and Archiving
• E-Mail Marketing Tools
• Online Reputation Management Tools
• Social Networking Tools
• Custom Software Applications
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO Tools)
• …And more!

You just need the RIGHT consultants who can help you make it happen. Solutions that are properly implemented can be successfully managed by internet and computer novices without the expense of full-time IT staff.  Run your businesses with the efficiency secrets enjoyed by Fortune 500 companies.

About the Content:

The Web and I prides ourselves upon ability to produce great content at the rate of $25 per page.  We can take all of the marketing material you have to work with, work up a marketing strategy, and then weave this into a seamless whole, filling in the gaps.  We know what pages will be needed for your business model and we can perform a gap analysis prior to commencement of the project.

About the users:

User testing across the gamut of all browser types is central to our design process. We wish to make the experience for the user the best possible, with a logical and easy to navigate information architecture, and fresh, engaging content.