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Our process involves getting to know your brand and your project requirements; once we're there, we can recommend the best strategic and technical approaches to make your project a success. We'll always look to find the best tools to suit your needs. Having said that, we find that very often our clients' needs are well-matched by a few core technologies:

• Open Source Solutions

  We're big fans of open source technology, where we're able to bring the community efforts of developers from around the world to benefit your solution. It means we're not needing to build everything for you from scratch, which means you'll get more bang for your buck. It means you're not locked in to using us for future development--because we want you to continue working with us because you love our work, not because you have no other choice. And it means that when you're working with us, you also benefit from the work and expertise of thousands of other developers who have helped figure out the hard stuff before we even need to write a line of code.

  As well as open source software, we like to use open tools that allow integration and interoperation through Web Services. For example, we regularly integrate clients' websites with Salesforce.com for lead generation and marketing automation, and we've also utilized open tools like Flickr and Twitter to help companies manage and reuse information. We feel that there are a great number of opportunities to piggy-back on the great work that others have done and leverage that work for the success of our customers; contact us so we can have a chat about how we can use those tools to help ensure your success.

• Some of the open source tools we use and love include:

  • Drupal

    A leading open source content management tool, Drupal provides great flexibility and a large number of third-party modules.

  • Ubercart

    A leading e-commerce module for Drupal, Ubercart integrates brilliantly and provides an excellent framework for many commerce solutions. Our preferred option for e-commerce development for sites where comprehensive content management is also required.

  • Magento

    Magento, the "ecommerce platform for growth," is an advanced commerce solution; we typically implement it when requirements transcend those easily met by Ubercart, and when integration with other key content management functionality is not a priority. (It can be integrated with Drupal, but it's not as seamless as with Ubercart.)

  • PHP

    Most of our favourite solutions--as well as major sites like Facebook and Wikipedia--are built on PHP. We've been developing for PHP since around version 3 (it's now on version 5) and we're big fans.

The Web has come a long way since we first started coding HTML. You've probably heard the term Web 2.0 bandied around; if you're like most people, you don't have a clear idea of what it means, since it's something that means many different things to different people. In part, it's about nifty interactive widgets and information that updates without you needing to refresh your browser; in part, it's about the interactions between different open systems, so that your Flickr images can show up on your Facebook profile page along with your Flickr updates.

Those are exciting developments, and we can work with you to make the most of them to suit your needs. But "Web 2.0" is also about key aspects of how content is coded, from the way in which the HTML is structured (techie note: we love XHTML Strict, tableless designs with a minimum of CSS hacks) to how your content is tagged and identified.

There are many key concepts around this with interesting names like the semantic web, microformats and findability; without boring you with details, we'd just like to recommend that an awareness of best practices in how your site is built can lead to better experiences for your users (in terms of finding and using content effectively), better credibility and search engine results for you, and more options for using your content in interesting new ways without requiring extensive redevelopment effort.

Whoever you use for your web projects (and we hope you'll contact us, we hope you'll ask about some of these concepts.

We're experts in building content management systems that are easy to use, require a minimum of technical know-how, and that help our customers take control of their information - from simple written content on their website to immersive, interactive databases.

We've built everything from simple tools to allow a single marketer to update events or press releases to large-scale, comprehensive content management systems where many users with different specialized roles engage in workflow to support a distributed maintenance effort.

Usually, we find that our clients want to start off with a straightforward solution, but need to be secure in knowing that their system can grow as they do, through the addition of new users, functionality and modules; for that reason, we typically recommend Drupal, although we have experience with other systems like WordPress, Joomla! and even, if you insist, Sharepoint. We work with you to find the right fit for your needs, and to help build a system that matches your technical experience and comfort level so that you can get just the right level of autonomy (and, of course, we're always available to help you maintain your CMS even once we've handed you the keys).

When we develop a site for you, whether it's a full-scale corporate entity or a targeted microsite for an email campaign, we'll work with you to find ways to measure and maximize its effectiveness.

Towards that end, we're experts in integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools like Salesforce.com and Sugar CRM, as well as with analytics tools (we prefer Google Analytics: it's inexpensive, easy to configure, and very deep and powerful). Working together with traditional web logs and performance monitoring, these give us the tools to compare different campaigns or pages for their effectiveness, and to provide you with ongoing reports as to the key metrics for the performance of your project.

When visitors register for information on your site, download case studies or use an interactive flash tool to gather information about your products, that's information you can use in your sales cycle. We can integrate use of your website into your sales support tools, from straightforward web-to-lead implementation to more advanced prospect scoring and marketing automation. Give us a call and we can talk through some ideas.

Heard about Salesforce.com but not sure where to begin? Our partners at Configero can work with you to find a solution to meet your needs and your budget. Give them a call!