WordPress Solution for Your Company
WordPress is a web software platform to create and design a beautiful, professional website or blog through highly customizable templates. For the past year, Maurer Website Design has been reviewing our clients’ websites to determine who would be good candidates for their websites being transitioned to and redesigned in WordPress. Our evaluation revealed to us WordPress is highly beneficial for everyone, including our own corporate websites (Maurer Graphics, Maurer Website Design and Castagne Graphics)! The WordPress custom solution will not only fit the current needs of our clients, but will allow for a wide variety of possibilities for expansion of services and features in the future. The upside is many, and we have yet to encounter a downside.
Like all corporate marketing materials, a professionally designed website provides a branded and memorable experience for the target market. The quality and aesthetics of the website’s design has direct impact on visitors’ perception of the company and its’ value proposition. Maurer Website Design develops the website’s “look-and-feel” to appeal to the client’s target market. The website’s design will provide visitors a memorable branded experience. Just let us know what you envision, and we can create the perfect site!
Maurer Website Design has a long history in website design and development, making us uniquely qualified to successfully design your site. Call (201) 414-0102 or e-mail us to get a customized proposal!
Feel confident that we will be your full-service consultant on the scope of the website design from project commencement through website launch and beyond! Consider us your in-house Creative Services department … without the overhead! We will provide on-going post production consulting services on the basic and more advanced activities for promoting your website to ensure maximum traffic and exposure.
Elegant Website Design
Maurer Website Design’s process is a collaboration with our client as we work with their designated contact person through every step of the design process. Our many years of experience have taught us keeping the client in the “development loop” is the most efficient way to manage a project, so everyone knows the status of the project at any given time. The first phase of the project begins with a kick-off phone conference to gather information from the client. Based on our discussions, we then choose an assortment of WordPress premium templates, allowing us to narrow our design focus more accurately to what the client wants us to do. We will then customize the appearance to their specifications by editing the PHP and CSS. This will give the website’s front-end a unique and elegant “look and feel” by incorporating the client’s logo, color scheme, font treatment, photography and other branded elements to the website.
Next we establish the architectural hierarchy of the website with efficient and “user friendly” navigational menus, allowing users to find what they’re looking for quickly. We collaborate with the client to present the pages in the most appealing way by writing rich informational content and creating dynamic images to highlight the capabilities of thier company in order to take advantage of the web as a marketing tool. We review their existing marketing materials and examine competitive sites to develop an eye-catching design not only to compete with the industry-standard but also to out-shine the competition!
Upon client approval of a final design and navigation, we will integrate the design into secondary page templates for client’s approval. Simultaneously, we will begin coding the home page, and post it on our test servers as a prototype. Upon approval of secondary page template and assuming that client has completed all site text, we begin final construction of the website, formatting the text and creating any images or elements as specified by client.
The final phase consists of making final edits, changes, corrections, etc. as specified by client. In addition, we will be adding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) code to the website, as specified by client.
Content Management System (CMS)
When using WordPress technology as your Content Management System (CMS)* platform, Maurer Website Design can ensure reduced maintenance costs and efficient updates for your website. Once WordPress is set up for you, you can easily create new pages or edit existing pages using a simple rich text editor. You’ll be able to update pages yourself without any additional programs or knowledge of HTML. Just your PC and browser. It’s easier than using Microsoft Word to add, edit or delete. Maurer Website Design can walk you through it via telephone in minutes. And, of course we’re always available to answer questions or to make any additional modifications to your site when necessary.
* A Content Management System (CMS) is a collection of computer-based procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. The procedures are designed to:
- Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data.
- Control access to data, based on user roles. User roles define what information each user can view or edit.
- Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data.
- Reduce repetitive duplicate input .
- Improve the ease of report writing.
- Improve communication between users.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
WordPress provides good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) right out of the box. The SEO is just outstanding with so many benefits using WordPress plugins!
Maurer Website Design will provide search engine optimization to improve your website’s interaction with both the user and the search engines. website marketing services to ensure keyword maximization, search engine readiness and search engine registration using The Google Trifecta: Webmaster Tools, Analytics, Website Optimizer.
Maurer Website Design adheres to the best practices outlined below to make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content:
- Create unique, accurate page titles
- Make use of the “description” meta tag
- Improve the structure of your URLs
- Make your site easier to navigate
- Offer quality content and services
- Write better anchor text
- Use heading tags appropriately
- Optimize the use of images
- Make effective use of robots.txt
- Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
- Promote your website in the right ways
- Make use of free webmaster tools
- Take advantage of web analytics services
Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your website’s user experience and performance in organic search results.
Keyword Research
Keyword strategy is the most important part any SEO effort. Most websites unknowingly target the wrong search terms, ignoring important opportunities or taking the visitor to the wrong page. In order to optimize a website, we must first know the correct keywords.
Search Engine Positioning
We will incorporate META information into your Web pages for proper search engine indexing. There are two main META Tags to be considered, “Keywords” and “Description”. We will assist with the authoring of these META Tags for maximized search engine indexing. In addition, we will optimize links & tags, and where necessary, suggest text/content changes.
Search Engine Registration
Once your website is published, we will register your website with the top 20 search engines and directories including Google, Yahoo!, Excite and Alta-Vista and GoTo.
Reciprocal Link Exchanges
Maurer Website Design will consult with you to gain more site traffic, improve link popularity and a higher page ranking through Reciprocal Link Exchanges.
Unlimited Plugins, Countless Options
Maurer Website Design uses WordPress, one of the leading open source blogging platforms. WordPress utilizes plugins (or programming scripts) to enhance your website’s functionality and performance. Web developers around the world have created thousands of WordPress plugins allowing users to easily and quickly customize your website’s appearance and extend your website’s functionality to do almost anything you can imagine.
Boost Marketing Efforts
It takes at least five times the time and expense to acquire a new customer as it does to keep a current one. Your website can be a great tool for providing on-going customer service and support as well as achieving significant cost savings to boot! To acquire a new client base, it is crucial in your e-business web strategy to think through all the possible audiences for your website, and all the ways in which you might interact with them. Interactive websites have proven to be most effective to ensure visitor engagement with your company.
Every page of your website should have a strategy, and be clear about inviting visitor interactions to achieve your goals. Your website will be designed to maximize visitor interaction and provide tools to allow visitors to become participants rather than just visitors. This might include requesting a catalog, asking for technical support or signing up for a newsletter. Maurer Website Design will also create obvious text links and invitations to visitors, which will make it easy for them to contact you.
With a strong marketing and advertising background, Maurer Website Design develops websites with your company’s goals in mind. Thus, your objectives are executed in a manner that most complements your established brand by creating powerful messaging and strong visuals that sell your product or services to the targeted demographic. Whatever your purpose for publishing to the web, we design your website to ensure a positive return on your investment by using WordPress plugins as a marketing tool to further extend your reach and online presence.
According to e-mail marketing best practices, recipients must sign up or “opt in” to receive marketing promotions via e-mail, such as a newsletter. Businesses that distribute unsolicited e-mail blasts may have their domains flagged as spam. This practice can also annoy or aggravate potential customers.
To offer various opportunities for blog visitors to “opt in” for newsletter subscriptions, we can add WordPress newsletter subscription plugins. Maurer Website Design offers consultation of E-mail Campaign Strategies by using these plugins to grow readership and e-mail databases for the client’s website and/or blog.
Free Advertising & Promotions
Maurer Website Design conceptualizes advertising strategies by combining a sophisticated knowledge of marketing, sales and advertising with strong design and production skills into creative concepts to attract attention and increase sales while strengthening the established branding. With this combined expertise in a variety of disciplines, we can successfully coordinate your company’s visual identity with it’s marketing. In the current economic climate, using advertising through your website to attract attention and increase sales of your product, business or service is highly effective and quite cost-efficient. By testing and measuring results, Maurer Website Design works with our clients to determine what advertising method works best to promote their company’s qualities and advantages while strengthening their established branding:
- Contextual Ads (including Google Adsense)
- Affiliate Ads
- Ad Networks
- Direct Ad Sales / Sponsorships
- Selling You Own Products or Services
Contextual Ads
These are ads are related to the content of your site and are displayed on your website. Currently, the most popular of the contextual ad is Google Adsense and probably all you need. Maurer Website Design can implement these ads for you. The bonus is as your website traffic grows so will your income.
Affiliate Ads
When you become an affiliate for a certain product or service, you receive a commission whenever you “refer” a sale. Sales are referred by your readers clicking on a banner ad or a text link ad taking them to the company’s website. Remember: The quality of the affiliates ads you choose for your website has a direct reflection on your company so it serves you well to choose high quality products and services. When you find products and services you believe are good quality as well as your readers would be interested in, you will seek to join their affiliate program. Once you join the program, Maurer Website Design will help promote their product by adding a banner ad in your sidebar.
Another option is to promote affiliate products directly on your website pages or blog posts. This can be more effective because you can give a description and personal recommendation of the product. In this case, Maurer Website Design would link to the product using your affiliate link.
The affiliate program’s provider does all the tracking of sales and will usually send you payments automatically and electronically.
Ad Networks
These are networks that work as a middleman. They secure the advertisers and you provide the advertising space on your website. When you sign up with any of these ad networks, Maurer Website Design will obtain their ad code and place it in the sidebar text widget.
They will keep track of all sales and will usually pay you monthly either through ACH, PayPal or a check.
Direct Ad Sales / Sponsorships
This setup is where you secure the advertisers or sponsors. You are responsible for setting your rates, invoicing and tracking payments. Maurer Website Design will set up the coding of the ads whether they are a text links or banner ads and place it in the sidebar text widget.
Selling Your Own Products or Services
When promoting products and services you want to sell personally on your website, then Maurer Website Design will design the text or banner advertising to go along with it. We will place the promotion for your products and services on your website pages, blog postings or your sidebar with text widgets.
Full-Service Consultants
Feel confident Maurer Website Design will be your full-service consultant on the scope of the project — from website conception through final launch — and well beyond! Consider us your virtual Creative Services department by eliminating the overhead! We offer maintenance/upgrade services for existing WordPress websites and blogs. You may have done as much as you can to get your WordPress website up and running, but you need a little help to finish the job. Or you may need help using all the features that come with a premium WordPress theme. Or you may need assistance optimizing your site for search engines, or finding and installing the best WordPress plugins and widgets.
We are always available to provide post-production website consulting on the basic and more advanced activities for promoting your website to ensure maximum traffic and exposure as well as other print graphic design solutions, including:
Please note: The links above will bring you to Maurer Graphics — our parent company located conveniently to NYC — offering professional, turnkey solutions to all campaign strategies and graphic design requirements since 1988.
Maurer Website Design appreciates that each project is unique with it’s own special requirements. Based on your needs as discussed in our preliminary consultation, we will develop a customized proposal with recommendations as well as a quote and projected timeline for completion.
Call (201) 414-0102 or e-mail us to get a customized proposal!
