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Morewave provides various services: web development, custom design, e-commerce,
shopping carts, integration with databases and legacy systems, assess and redesign
existing web site sites, maintenance, corporate branding and web promotions. We
have the experience, the talent, the creativity and especially the technical skills to
build powerful, scalable and professional web applications that best suit your needs.
Typical services include:
- Online brochures and product catalogs
- Company profiles, marketing materials
- Design original graphics, professional photography, logos
- Scanning, touchup, adding artistic effects
- Stylesheets, information architecture, look and feel consistency
- Dynamic content, various client-side scripting effects
- Multimedia presentations, Flash animations, games
- Manuals, tutorials, guidelines, product help and technical documentation
- Data collection, online forms, information requests, integration with databases and other synchronous/asynchronous messaging systems
- News releases, forums, mailing lists, email marketing
- Database driven web sites: from simple applications to complex, process intensive, mission-critical systems
- E-commerce solutions, shopping carts, credit card transactions with several gateways
- Business-to-business applications, data mapping, data replication, system integration
- Custom applications deployed on Internet/Intranet
- Web promotions, search engine submissions, marketing services
How we work
How do we develop the web sites? What is required from your end? The following
step-by-step process outlines what it takes to build and market a site. This process
remains almost the same, regardless of the type the web site. Complex applications
will follow the same process, but it will vary in terms of scope and deliverables.
1. Setting goals
In the first meeting we help you set the goals for the web site and get as much
information as possible about your company, processes and products.
We will try to answer the following questions:
- What exactly you want to accomplish with this web site?
- Who in your company will be responsible for the site?
- What is the targeted audience?
- What type of information will be published on the site? What features and functionality will be exposed to public, registered customers or site administrators? Are you looking for an online brochure or other advanced features?
- How often should the site be updated? Who will be responsible to maintain and approve the content?
- Will the site be linked to other internal applications?
- How will the information be protected? Are there any security issues?
- Where will the site be hosted? What type of web server?
Do you want to …
- Improve or speed up the customer service?
- Provide instant communications to your employees?
- Collect customer demographic data or conduct market research? What types of online forms could be useful? How will the data collection be integrated with your existing applications (database, email notifications etc)?
- Cut your printing and mailing costs for marketing materials? If you decide to develop an online product catalog, we will help you decide about its form, structure, organization, text and graphic materials.
- Find new customers and sell products on the site 24x7? If you decide to choose an e-commerce solution, we will help you find the best technology, design the process, the cart and select the features the suits best your needs.
- Streamline the fulfillment process? Any other processes that should be integrated and web enabled (e.g. invoicing, online payments, knowledge base, document management, downloads, order tracking etc)? There are a lot of other questions if you intend to fully integrate your web site with the rest of your business. These questions are customized to your business and targeted to maximize your investment.
The answers to the questions above will provide us with the information we need to
develop the technical specifications for your web site and come up with the estimate.
It will help us understand what you want to accomplish, how your company works, if
there are any systems or additional applications to be integrated and what features
could be added. By answering these questions we help you save development time and
money, set goals and establish the budget.
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2. Architecture
Once all of the questions about your site have been answered, we can start to develop
the architecture. In this phase we will build the main layout, site map, page flow and
the site navigation. We will also design the file and directory structure, taking into
account future growth and site maintenance. After that, we typically concentrate our
effort on choosing the right hosting platform, the database, transaction security,
technology, bandwidth and other key aspects in terms of development and deployment.
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3. Design
This phase is extremely important, because the look of your site is a large part of the
message you will be delivering to your customers. Same as for television or advertising,
the first impression matters. The design requires a collaborative effort from team members
with different skills: web designers, artists and user interface specialists. Deciding what
your site looks like is the first step on building the prototype. The next steps are carefully
planned, as changing the look and feel of the web site later, is not extremely easy.
The design emphasizes creativity, functionality, user-friendless, a consistent graphic style
and fine balance between graphic and content. The pages should provide quick access
to information and make it easy for the visitor to get around the site. Our design creates
a look and feel consistent with the corporate image and is well adapted to the target
audience. The design will also take into consideration technical issues like: loading time,
size of graphics, cross-browser compatibility, fonts, styles, client-side scripting etc. Some
features don't work in early Netscape versions, but will work if implemented correctly in
JavaScript. We recommend designs that work in both Internet Explorer and Netscape.
These browsers account for 99% of web users. Making the web experience pretty much
the same for all visitors eliminates code duplication and simplifies site maintenance. Relying
on plug-ins that may need to be downloaded and installed before the feature can be
experienced is unsafe. Most of the users won't take the time to download them, or don’t
know how to do that.
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4. Prototype
At the end of the design phase, we will pick a couple of pages that most likely will become
candidates for page templates. Based on the graphical design, we build a functional
prototype that is presented for approval. At this stage of the project, you will be able to
review the structure of the site, the page flow, a list of all features and a couple of
samples, either in HTML or GIF, JPG format.
For more advanced projects, we build high level and detailed design documents, functional
specs, complete set of use cases, class diagrams, scenario and activity diagrams and
finally the project plan with important milestones and deliverables.
Every prototype is also accompanied by the project estimate, with man hours and
detailed costs. The pricing varies from project to project, based on complexity and
application features.
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5. Content
Content is what keeps users on your site and motivates them to come back for more. It
can be news and information, interactive features that get them involved, let them make
transactions, download information and provide you with valuable feedback.
In order to start the actual development, we need to get/create in one form or another,
content for every web page. There are a couple of ways to achieve that:
- Since you know your business better than us, you should provide the content of the pages. We can use the content in any format or media. Existing brochures and product information are also very useful.
- We can extract the text from your existing promotional materials, marketing, advertise etc.
- We can also bring one of our professional writers and create the text from scratch. This approach however, will increase the cost of the project.
What features can be included in your web site? Here is a sample list:
- Collect user opinions and demographic information
- Provide forums or chat rooms for customer interaction
- Take orders for products and information requests
- Provide tours of plants or destinations; slide shows, surround videos
- Demonstrate products or processes; add product features, technical sheets, images and diagrams
- Online registration and reservations
- Send email notifications to clients
- Add a variety of interactive forms
- Keep track of customer orders, invoices, payments, suppliers
- Document management; provide downloads or customer support
- Opinion polls and feedback forms
- Online purchases and transactions, shopping carts
- Animated content, JavaScript rollovers, Flash inserts, ranging from simple ads to complicated games or online helps
The list can go on the on; we have developed all the above and much more. There is
practically no restriction, we can build any type of feature and integrate your site with
existing applications or databases.
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6. Production
Once we have set the goals for the site, determined the architecture, technology,
look-and-feel, content and feature list, we are ready to start the actual production. The
production involves preparation of graphics, animation, page templates, styles, scripts
and forms. It also involves for certain projects, designing and implementing the backend,
the middle-tier components and perhaps other custom modules.
The pages and the application infrastructure are created on a development server, then
migrated and tested on a staging server and finally published on the production server,
the one that actually hosts your site. The development phase is an iterative process
that takes a while: it takes time to code every page, test the basic functionality, test
the page with several browsers and operating systems, link the pages together and
integrate and retest the final product. In most cases, you will be able to get password
protected access to your site, to review the progress and provide valuable feedback.
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7. Marketing
We recommend that part of the budget should be set aside for a web marketing program.
During the development phase, we will pay special attention to the technical and
programming aspects that effect how the site can be indexed by search engines. Each
search engine and directory weights aspects of a page differently, so we have to cover
all bases so that you will be indexed correctly and score in the top results. After the
rollout, the site should be submitted to various search engines including Google, Alta
Vista, Yahoo!, Excite, Infoseek, using keywords that should result in the retrieval of one
of your web pages.
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8. Maintenance
Content gets old quickly on the web. That's why the maintenance and current updates
are so important for your site. There is a direct correlation between the amount of new
material on the site and the frequency of returning visitors. We can help you maintain
the site by uploading new text, pictures, news releases, changing the “what’s new”
section, maintain products and price lists, run contests or mailing lists.
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Expertise
We provide expertise in:
XML, XSL, ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, Perl, CGI, HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, VB Script,
Visual Basic, C++, COM+, Java, IIS, Apache, SQL 2000, MySQL, Access, Interdev,
VStudio, SharePoint, Commerce Server, Site Server, Exchange, Exim, MailMan,
Flash, PhotoShop, FrontPage, RUP, MSF.
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