Our Development Philosophy and Services

We work with a very different philosophy than most software and web development companies, involving six key points:

  • Fast development
  • Inexpensive Project Cost
  • Complete Project Analysis
  • Customer Education
  • No Lock In
  • Appropriate Billing

Fast Development:  Not matter what market you’re in the world has gotten more competitive.  The time between an idea and a finished product has to be as short as possible, lest your competition get there first.  Being first to market with a new idea is paramount sometimes.  And sometimes it’s just a matter of getting yourself into a crowded market quickly, before the money dries up.  Our development process helps shorten development time (see our Project Blog entries for an example of a complete eCommerce system going from idea to completion in 4 days, for example)

Inexpensive Project Cost:  We don’t work with million dollar development projects.  It’s not that we wouldn’t want a million dollars – it’s that we feel we should be charging a fair price for a good project.  Additionally, most of our customers are smaller (sometimes just single-person start ups even), so we try and keep our development process light and inexpensive every step of the way.  The little things are what make the difference – for instance, we could laboriously create new photos for the site, write copy from scratch, and a whole host of things many development firms would do.  Instead, we find what competencies the customer already has that could be leveraged to bring our development cost – and the customer’s final bill – down to the lowest possible price.

Complete Project Analysis:  Sure, we could be like every other company, and just do the job while asking as few questions as possible.  We don’t – we like happy, successful customers.  So we dig in further during the project planning phase.  We identify potential flaws in the plan, both from the technical and business standpoint, and make sure those flaws are communicated to the customer.  Additionally, we also find points where the development plan could be enhanced, giving the customer better bang for their buck.

There’s another thing that goes with our complete project analysis policy – sometimes we turn down projects we just don’t feel will have a good chance of success.  Yes, the customer will find someone else to do the project, and yes, we don’t get paid for it.  But we like to keep a track record of happy, profitable customers, not customers who’ll feel like we’ve swindled them because we took their money, built their website, and they still failed.  We do everything within reason to make sure our customers are successful.

No Lock In:  Many web development companies have a very specific concept – they will build the website for you, and after it’s done, they’ll also handle all updates for you no matter how trivial.  Of course, they charge you over and over for those services.  We take a different approach – when we’re done, we create a set of passwords for you to update your own site.  Most of our customers come back to us for major updates, but handle their own minor updates like adding an event to their online schedule.  Why lock a customer in, where they begrudge having to call us for every little thing, when instead we have a happy customer on the line who is happy to be talking to us about a major expansion since they’ve saved so much on those little updates?

Customer Education:  Every time we do a project we teach the customer how to use the site.  It’s a part of our No Lock In policy really, but we feel it also stands on it’s own – we’d rather the customer feel confident about their site, and eventually proud of the work the do from time to time on their own.  But it helps us too – next time a major overhaul needs to happen, it’s not a mystery to the customer – they have a bit of an idea how the site works, so they understand the work and attention to detail we put into our projects.

Appropriate Billing:  As mentioned before, often we work with projects for groups as small as one man startups, and sometimes we work with non-profit organizations.  These aren’t people with huge budgets, but still have large needs.  So, when appropriate, we take payments as low as $50 / month (depending on many factors.)  Not all of our customers have to take this route, of course, but it’s an option we throw out there.  It beats throwing it on a credit card too – these are flat payments without interest or finance charges.  It’s another way we can enable our customers to have successful projects.

Like what you’ve heard about us so far?  Great – we’d love to tell you more about ourselves, and talk to your about your project!  Hit the Contact Us button up top, and leave contact information and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!