Start with a strategic needs assessment and discovery process

The decision to redesign a website has to get beyond what is “hot” to what will really serve your organization and its constituency. It is easy for organizations to get caught up in deciding what software to use or having a jazzy new visual design. But the first step is to clarify goals and priorities for your website redesign and align them with those of your organization. Issues of budget, staff time and skills need to be carefully considered. Based on review of all these factors, we will recommend software to build and maintain your new website and identify key objectives, priorities and features for the project.

Develop a site design plan that matches your organizational priorities

We will work with you to identify who your target audiences are, prioritize them, focus in on what will bring them to your website and keep them coming back. We will produce a layout for your Home page and other key pages that keeps the needs and priorities of key audiences front and center. What actions do we want visitors to perform when they visit the site? What kind of interactive features from among the many web 2.0 tools will allow you to engage visitors and learn more about them? We will work with you to develop a navigation menu system that will help visitors find what they want quickly and easily.

Take an agile approach to development

For many clients, we have adopted an increasingly “agile” approach to development. Rather than investing a lot of time trying to hammer out all features in great detail up front, we pursue a more incremental or “evolutionary approach. We find that regularly reviewing development work with the client as it progresses, getting their input before we proceed to another level of detail, produces high quality software that is cost effective for the client. Especially for clients who have limited experience with technology projects and may have trouble articulating all their needs and requirements, it gives them–and us–a chance to get it right.

Create a visual design that reflects your organization’s personality

Creating a unique visual design that captures the spirit of your organization and brings your website’s “look and feel” in line with the audiences you want to reach is always a fun part of the process. Database Designs has its own designers, or we can work with your designer to produce a great looking site that is functional, accessible, maintainable, and eye-catching. We can create or tweak an existing logo, help you find and select photos, and create custom graphics and optimize photos and graphics for quick, sharp display on the web

Help you collect, write, edit and post great content

A great looking website with all kinds of bells and whistles and easy-to-use navigation won’t get you far–and may not ever see the light of day–if you don’t have a plan to produce and post the content that will make your site useful. We work with clients to develop a plan for getting their content ready for launch and can provide writing and editorial assistance as well. In many cases, we train appropriate staff to start posting content while the site is under development. In other cases, we can build-out the site for you and train staff later.

Integrate third party software

We have the skills on our team to perform all levels of integration of your internal database with your website or web portal. We also can integrate a broad range of third party software that supply the functionality you need out of the box including tools for eAdvocacy, enewsletters, political mobilization campaigns, and elearning. Not that many web design companies have the skills to do this type of work.

Help your website fulfill its potential after the launch

We can work with your web team to develop a plan that integrates your website with your organization's overall communications strategy; or develop a strategy if you don’t have one! We will teach you to read and understand the Google statistics that all of our websites collect to improve your site's popularity. And we will help you develop a process for collecting and reviewing content and maintaining and administering the website going forward.