Every project starts with some sort of market and client research.  The more we know about you, what you do, who you do it for, and in what ‘space’ you do it in will ensure a successful website that works FOR you.  We build customized strategies tailored to YOUR business so you can get what works and avoid what is not necessary.  Some of the areas we look into include…

• Your business background and objectives
• Your vision, mission, & values
• Your target market (customers)
• Your products & services
• Your industry or space
• Your competitors
• Your current branding
• Your current marketing efforts

User Experience Design is the process of building products that enhance user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and overall experience. This can include product discovery, on-boarding, day-to-day usage, as well as aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.

UX focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. It also takes into account the business goals and objectives of the group managing the project. UX best practices promote improving the quality of the user’s interaction with and perceptions of your product and any related services.

The branding & design process involves leveraging your company existing or updated branding (logo, colors, typography, etc) and your business goals to create a beautiful, professional and effective creative design for the website.

There are a lot of “do-it-yourself” website builders – like Wix – out there.  There is also that ‘nephew or co-worker that knows some html” out there.  What most people fail to realize is that there is so much more to good web design than just placing things in places and adding color.  Strong marketing professionals know how and where to place the proper messaging, calls-to-actions, and key content in order to get the user to fulfill the company’s goals.

You wouldn’t want your co-worker with a year of carpentry skills to build you a home, or your 15-year-old nephew who tinkers with automobiles to rebuild your race car.

Probably the most important part of your website is the content. Content is KING! Content includes all the words used on the site and how they are organized, as well as the imagery that supports your words.  You can actually have an ugly website that ranks on the first page of search engine results IF the content is professionally written and properly organized.  The design of the website is merely for the end viewer, but the content is for both people and computers.

You’ve been to a website that just ‘read’ weird.  You can tell the person who wrote the content had no clue how to create compelling and useful content.  Writing is an art, there is a process of constructing words together in a way that keeps the reader reading page after page.  Please don’t take this element of your website for granted, make sure your copy is reviewed and edited by a professional before you let prospective customers read it.

Features are where the ‘functionality’ comes to life on the website.  It includes dynamic operations such as submitting an email, mapping a store location, create mobile navigation dropdowns, ordering online, instantly chatting with customer service, and thousands of other features that are possible on your website.

What functions that go onto your website are dependent on what your goals for the site are.  Adding too many just because you like “bells and whistles” will cause confusion and bog down the site for no reason.  Adding too little may make the website appear dead.

During our meetings with our clients, we will work together to determine what features need to be added to the site for the best possible user experience for your customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of maximizing the number and quality of visitors to a website by improving rankings in the algorithmic search engine results through “free,” “organic,”, or “natural” means.

Google (and Bing, which also power Yahoo search results) score their search results largely based upon relevancy and authority of pages it has crawled and included in its web index, to a users query to provide the best answer.

SEO, therefore, involves making sure a website is accessible, technically sound, uses words that people type into the search engines, and provides an excellent user experience, with useful and high quality, expert content that helps answers the user’s query.

Web analytics is the process of analyzing the behavior of visitors to a Web site. The use of Web analytics is said to enable a business to attract more visitors, retain or attract new customers for goods or services, or to increase the dollar volume each customer spends.

Web analytics may include tracking the clickthrough and drill-down behavior of customers within the Web site, determining the sites from which customers most often arrive, and communicating with browsers to track and analyze online behavior. The results of Web analytics are provided in the form of tables, charts, and graphs.

Hosting & Domains are a mandatory part of any website and we can help you with getting these setup and configured properly.

‘Hosting’ refers to the cloud server that houses your website and all its files.  Consider it the ‘property’ where your house (website) is built. We can either work with your current hosting provider, or we can offer you a place on Zagrun’s hosting solutions.  While hosting with us, you get the piece of mind that all your website and all its apps and files are up-to-date and protected from outages and attacks.

‘Domain management’ refers to the domain name that people type into a web browser to get to your website – for example, ours is www.zagrun.com. Think of the domain name as the address of your house (website).  You may already own a domain name, or you may need a new one.  Either way, we can work with you and your domain vendor to ensure your domain is doing what it needs to for your site and emails to work.

There are numerous national and international regulations your website may need to comply with, such as…

• ADA – The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990 and is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities
• CAN-SPAM – The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.
• HIPAA Compliance – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 – United States legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information.
• PCI Compliance – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) applies to companies of any size that accept credit card payments.
• FDA 21 CFR Part 11 – Code of Federal Regulations that establishes the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations on electronic records and electronic signatures (ERES).
• GDPR – The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), agreed upon by the European Parliament and Council in April 2016, replaced the Data Protection Directive 95/46/ec in May 2018 as the primary law regulating how companies protect EU citizens’ personal data.

We will work to educate you on which ones you may or may not need at launch time. Our job is to make sure you are not breaking any rules or laws.

Prior to launching any new website, Zagrun will perform multiple tests to ensure everything is running smoothly and there are no errors that will make your business look bad.

• Functional Testing – Zagrun will fully test all site functionality
• Content QA and proofing – Zagrun will fully check all copy, links, images, and files for errors
• Performance Testing – Zagrun will run performance tests on site to ensure the site is loading properly and quickly
• Browser Testing – Zagrun will test in all supported browsers to ensure site renders correctly

You, as the client, are also urged to proof and test your own site as much as possible, even after launch.  The worst thing is to have a customer tell you a common word is misspelled on your website.

A responsive website is one that has been designed to respond or adapt, based on the technology and type of computing device used by the visitor to display the site. It is basically one website design that will look good at any size — from a large desktop LCD monitor to the smaller screens we use on smartphones and tablets.

Responsive design ensures visitors to the site have a similar experience that is independent of the of the size of the device used to view the site.

Every Zagrun site is built fully responsive and compatible with any screen resolution at launch. Anything else would just be plain dumb.