Technology and hosting
We host many of the sites that we build—most of which are custom built. Through experience we have become adept at taking over existing sites or web applications inherited from others. We maintain and enhance a complex survey application developed by a now defunct competitor written in PHP/MySQL. We also host and maintain entire websites that were developed by others.
Our servers are located in secure network operating centers and are monitored 24x7 by professional technicans. We perform backups daily, use high-end hardware, and tailor hosting solutions to the needs of our clients. We work with ASP/.Net, ColdFusion, MS SQL Server, PHP, and MySQL. Many of our projects include integration with internal systems or databases.
Sites we have recently constructed comply with the latest XHTML/CSS standards and are therefore easily adapted and highly accessible.
E-commerce
We've built several custom shopping cart implementations with various levels of automation. Some are used to sell products in the traditional sense and others are used to sell digital access to content. Some are tightly integrated with internal systems and others rely on a secure backend to process and fulfill orders.
Design philosophy
Our design team has been creating websites since the web's inception and designed for other media before that. We feel strongly that good website design is more than page decoration—it encompasses aesthetics, information architecture, usability, and technology. Our "form follows function" philosophy centers on user needs such as finding information, conducting transactions, and communicating with others.
What we do
We build websites that work! Our experience—11 years building dozens of websites—combined with your industry and organizational knowledge results in a website tailored to the needs of your audiences and you business communication requirements.
Our designs are elegant and highly functional with emphasis on usability. Most sites we build are dynamic and maintained by our clients via our easy-to-use content management system. We employ the latest web standards to simplify future enhancements, ensure optimal browser compatibility, and provide sites accessible to those with disabilities.
Content Management
We've been building content management systems since 1996. So far as we know, we were the first in Chicago to do so.
Content management is only part of the solution, however. Ever read an article on a website and see a sidebar that listed five related articles, press releases, or events? That's what we mean by dynamic content and that's the power of a site employing content management.
We view the content management system as a funnel—you pour the content into the system and, based on rules you define, content is presented in dynamic and meaningful ways to your users.