Internet Services
There is an afwul lot to the"Internet Thing" with changes happening on a daily basis. To simplify it all, it helps if you group all the things we do into one of three core disciplines:
Ordinarily, this is a lot to learn (and keep learing!). But when you hire us, you have just made your life much easier. You have no worries about the Emerging XML standard and how it might affect your website (or train your employees). The upcoming version of NT Server will be the farthest thing from your mind. You don't think about Year 2000 Compliance rediness. You don't have to care about how we manage all of our servers. You get no calls in the middle of the night from our 24x7 server monitors. This, (all of it) is our problem. Our Business.
Website Design
Our design process begins with an initial interview to determine requirements, goals, client contacts, operational procedures, in addition to the content of the website itself.Consistent with the goals of the site, we will design a "look and feel", select one or more DataObject applications, install and modify them as necessary, work with you to write any needed copy, review the site internally and with selected external groups, fine-tune everything, declare completion and as necessary, start the process over for the next phase.
Obviously, this is a highly simplied version of our process. Just keep this in mind the next time you are tempted by one of those "Instant Website" kits at CompUSA.
Hosting
Hosting is the process of putting your website "online", available to the general public (or selected audience in the case of non-public sites). Hosting with the right company is so important! Slow websites are the single largest reason for failing to attain your goals. Of course, a website might be slow for a wide variety of reasons, mostly having to do with the hosting provider although many have to do with the design of the site itself.If you host with a cut-rate provider (anything less than $30/month), be prepared to put up with:
- Long hold times for any kind of support.
- Poor support from minimum wage operators.
- A slow website - how many million other websites share your server?
The bottom line in hosting is you get what you pay for! The Internet has changed a lot of things, but it hasn't touched basic economic laws.
Our hosting services begin with a basic principal of never using more than 50% of our capacity for any resource we provide, be it bandwidth (Don't listen when a provder tells you they have fifty T-3 lines, ask them how full they are), CPU capacity on our servers, or enough humans to answer the phone (Yes, humans really do answer our phones!).
Our websites are hosted on state-of-the-art server clusters. Since we lauched our clustered server farm, it is has never gone down.
Ongoing Management
This is where things start to really get interesting. You now have a targeted website residing on fast servers. Now is the time to bring in some traffic. Register with the search engines. (Quick question: How many are there? Answer). Tell your customers. Update your business cards & letterhead. Put out those Press Releases. Register for awards. Exchange links. Still with us?We're not done yet. Track hits and visits. Read your responses. Make changes. Find some online partners. Dream up some new ways to do business. What are your competitors doing? Are they successful? Teach your employees how to work smarter using the net.
Now that you have an idea of some of the things involved, you should also have an idea of why it is so important to choose a partner that knows them all.
