Web Design Services
Our web design philosophy is this: We design websites and applications to be used. We design for the user experience, because websites and applications that get used, get loyalty and traffic, which is as good as gold in the internet economy. Of course we care deeply about aesthetics and branding, but these concerns ought to be complimentary to the user experience, not opposed to it. Our methodical approach integrates branding and artistic considerations into the larger task of creating incredibly pleasant user experiences.
The key components of an effective design project are presented below. With the exception of prototyping, we typically perform each of these services as part of an integrated web design and development project.
Usability Design
In a nutshell, usability design is about minimizing the amount of effort required of the user while maximizing the reward for the effort invested. Our web usability design capabilities cover the gamut, from the use of personas in a parallel design process to prototyping for usability testing. That said, we realize that many Catholic organizations just don't have the budget for such precision tuning of their website. Fortunately, we've learned a lot about usability that we apply to every project. These fundamentals of usability design include defining website stakeholder goals, identifying and segmenting audiences, understanding each audience user's needs and goals, designing pages for scanning (not reading), designing intuitive (familiar) user interfaces, employing descriptive page titles and navigation links, focusing on useful and relevant content, and encouraging a less-is-more practice of writing for the web.
Information Architecture
Well-organized content is essential to making the experience of using your website coherent and satisfying. Information architecture (IA) refers to the discipline of defining the organizational structure of your website. It describes the ways in which the different content pages of your site relate to one another and ensures that information is organized in a consistent and predictable way on each page. It involves assessing existing and needed content, organizing the pages, mapping the site's navigational structure, and laying out the page level organization of information. For most custom website design project we provide a complete site map, showing the content organization and navigational structure, and wireframe diagrams of each distinctive page layout.
Prototyping
For more complex web sites or applications, it may be desirable to test the design with prototypes before engaging in the actual development work, since the building of prototypes is far less expensive than full-blown web development. Our prototyping capabilities run from simple interactive wireframes to fully fleshed-out simulations. The extent of prototype development is dependent entirely on the testing requirements of the project. Our prototyping application is fully web enabled and interactive, allowing stakeholders easily apply comments and notes directly to any element of the design as they are working through the reviewing/testing process.
Creative Design
There are virtually no limits to the creative design possibilities we can deliver. However, just because it can be done, doesn't mean that it should be done. There is a definite movement among web leaders toward a more simplified visual design. This movement has been largely spurred by the demand for usability across the range of web clients coming into to use. Also, web marketing emphasis has shifted from flashy, sometimes amazing deigns to the higher long-term value offerings of useful, relevant content and the well structured organization of that content. Our creative design service can help you create a visual design that offers both a boost for your brand and a blessing for your user.