Creating and developing a website is serious business! Your website is your most valuable “employee” – working 24/7/365, never taking vacation or sick days, and always available to present your core message and information to potential clients and customers. It is the hub of all of your communication – everything else you do to share your stories and information should always refer people back to your website. And your website must be found by potential customers/clients in the vast sea of millions of websites out in the online world. If those looking to purchase your services or products can’t find you with a search, the value of your website is greatly diminished.
At Acara Partners, we have our own in-house communications and digital marketing company – Reach Beyond Marketing. Our team works tirelessly to develop websites for our clients that include expertly written and optimized content. This includes a design and visual presentation that will make your brand shine, a meticulous build with the latest architecture and coding to run flawlessly and will excel on all mobile and traditional platforms, and utilizes the latest SEO strategies so your site is found in searches.
Below is an outline of the web development process at Reach Beyond Marketing:
- Brand Application – as an initial step, the team at Reach works with you to develop a plan that weaves your brand identity into your website
- The next order of business is to hear from you through an envisioning meeting. During this time together, our team will review your current website (if you have one) and discuss strategies and likes/dislikes in preparation for the new website. An important outcome of spending this time together is to identify your brand voice, both written and visual. This information is critical to both the content writers and graphic designers to reflect your brand through your finished website.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential process in making sure that your site is easily found by potential clients and customers. Optimizing your website for effective SEO includes identifying and organizing keywords, developing geo-locators, providing header information, having sound URL structure, and providing numerous tracking campaigns.
- Sitemap development is a one-week process that involves the creation of an organized and intuitive structure. During this period, our team creates your sitemap to reflect the latest and best practices in web design and navigation, while keeping your brand and voice in mind.
- Our art department begins creating and producing mockup designs. These framework samples include a design of the home page, one subpage, and any other unique pages that may be part of your website. This includes image and photo selection, icon development, color and brand integration, and more.
- The content writing team develops optimized content based upon the voice, which was determined through the envisioning process. Initially, sample content is sent to you for review in order to insure that we have captured your voice and style. After this initial process is completed, the team crafts unique and powerful copy for each page on the sitemap, paying special attention to presenting optimized content that will help you get noticed by the search engines and funnel clients to the appropriate call to action.
- After all of these pieces of your website have been created, developed, and approved, the web coders begin their work of building the site structure. This involves capturing all of the content, design, SEO, and navigation elements into a build that produces a fast, stable, secure, and optimized website for your organization. Once complete, this is sent to you in a staging mode for review and approval.
- Once the site is built and approved, there is another crucial step that must take place before it goes live – quality assurance. The Acara team will conduct an exhaustive audit of all elements of your site (those previously discussed here and more) to insure that all is good to go during this final stage.
- This is the most exciting part of the website process – launching your beautiful new site and presenting it to the world! We will also discuss strategies with you to take advantage of the promotion and marketing opportunities presented with the launch of your new website.
