Web site is a powerful tool for advertising and brand building. We work with you to understand your business and your target audience in order to design a site that is consistent with your identity and attractive to your potential clients.

Our Development Model

The follow is our proven 6-step model for building effective, powerful websites.

(Step 1) - Needs Assessment
We will meet with you to flesh out exactly what it is you perceive as the goals for your website. You might be interested in using your website simply as an online brochure, or you may want to do transactions over the Internet in order to sell your goods or services. This step is critical in that it will define the effort required for the rest of the project.

Do you have a website already, or is your business new to the Internet? If you don't have a website, then we will guide you through the process of securing a domain, or web address (e.g. www.yourcompany.com), and securing a hosting package from a reputable ISP (Internet Service Provider). We will handle every step of this sometimes tedious and confusing setup.

Establishing who your target audience, or demographic, is, is a critical phase in development. It is vital to have a firm grasp on who your website will be working for, and to gain some insight into how your audience will most likely utilize it. This decision will assist us further in Step 2.

We also gather some technical information from this step in terms of keywords and descriptions. By clarifying what the goals are of your business on the Web, we will establish the types of keywords (to be utilized in META tags, titles and descriptions) we want to utilize in order to maximize your Search Engine placements.

(Step2) - Project Scope Definition
In this step, we will define the structure of your website. Some people refer to this as a "Site Map". If you have an existing website, we could potentially use this as a starting point. This step involves a large degree of understanding of the concepts of Usability. The physical architecture of your website (which will mimic the actual flow of content that your users experience) must be well thought out and must be conceived with a user-centric approach in mind. What this means is that the flow of your website must follow the way a user will navigate. What you believe to be a logical hierarchy might make no sense at all to your customers. We will outline some of the tasks that we believe users might undertake, and then design the hierarchy of your website around those tasks. This is a user-centric design.

Once we have defined the pages within your website, we will spec out how the content for these pages will be developed. Will you write the content yourself or have Vanadu.com do it for you? Perhaps a combination would be the best solution. Either way, defining what we anticipate to appear on your web pages is crucial to development of the Site Map.

During this step, we will also define any special development pieces that may be required. Whether you want some Flash animations, database-driven pages, feedback forms, or any other automated procedures or code, they will be identified here.

This Step is also critical in establishing the scope of the website design project. We are now both confident in the number of pages to be developed, what they will be called, and how they will flow between each other.

(Step3) - Layout & Design
During this phase, one of the most time-consuming, few design and layout concepts will be put forward by Vanadu.com. Based on your feedback, 1 or 2 further iterations of the designs and layouts will be performed, and a final concept will be agreed upon. These designs will be developed with, once again, the user in mind. Your preferences are, of course, the final word on the design decisions, however.

Some often overlooked design elements will also be established during this step. Appropriate fonts and colors need to be established to ensure consistency throughout your website.

(Step4) - Development
In this step, development of the actual web pages begins. We now have enough information from you to start putting our ideas into physical form. Template pages are necessary to ensure consistency among all pages in your website.

We incorporate all the technical data gained from Step 1 (e.g. keywords, descriptions and META tags), all the design and layout gained from Step 3 (e.g. images, fonts, colours, etc.), and a template page is developed for each hierarchical layer in your website, which we established in Step 2 (your Site Map).

We now begin to create all the individual pages in your website. From your Home Page to your Contact Us page, right down to your individual product pages, every item identified in the Site Map is brought to life.

Whether we are writing your content for you, helping you write it, or simply posting what you give us, the pages within your site will now be functional, and you will be able to view your website in reality for the first time.

(Step5) - Testing
This is essentially the final development step. Your website is thoroughly tested to ensure it is error-free, and any changes and fixes are made before posting.

We take a copy of your site and put it onto a CD for you for backup storage purposes.

(Step6) - Completion
The final website is posted to your domain, and you are now live!

We have found the following principles below to be important to the success of creating new web site.

- Make it unique
- Keep it simple
- Make it compatible
- Make it easy to navigate
- Make it easy to bookmark
- Make it easy to expand
- Code by hand
- Understand graphics
- Keep the search engines in mind
- Make it affordable

Without the proper thought given to each of these issues, your website will not be as effective or as powerful as it could be.