What is Web Design? 

Web design is the skill of designing presentations of content (usually hypertext or hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software like Internet television clients, microblogging clients and RSS readers.

The process of designing Web pages, Web sites, Web applications or multimedia for the Web may utilize multiple disciplines, such as animation, authoring, communication design, corporate identity, graphic design, human-computer interaction, information architecture, interaction design, marketing, photography, search engine optimization and typography.

What can we do for you?

Our website design and development team offers original design that suits your image. This can include content preparation, ecommerce set-up and all other website structural, design and services. We know that it is extremely important that any visitor to your site can immediately understand your message, navigate through your site with ease and interact with it in a way that provides the best experience possible. The value that we bring to web design is in understanding how a website fits into the organization's integrated marketing strategy. For each client, Soulie Designs Web Development makes certain that the website fits neatly with every other marketing piece. The clients then achieve true branding on their websites and throughout all of their marketing programs.

Soulie Designs Web Development can help you with database-backed websites as well. Our technology experts possess extensive experience in building large, robust web solutions, as well as less complicated web databases. Soulie Designs will work with you diligently to complete the project on time and within your budget.

Web Design Process

The following is a brief overview of the methodology that we generally uses to create websites.

Project Kickoff and Brainstorming Session

We will discuss your goals, product or service offerings, competition, partners, and more. Why? Because the only way we can produce meaningful website design is if we have a good understanding of your business.

Marketing Research

We explores the websites and other marketing materials for similar organizations – we want to know the state of the industry so that your site is best positioned. We also study businesses that offer similar or companion services so that we have a good working knowledge of your market.

Web Design

The next step is web design. We will use your corporate identity to build an interesting web presence specialized for your business and its objectives.

We will create a visually compelling layout design that exemplifies the top-quality products and services you provide to your clients. We ensure that your website is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and provides effective and easy-to-read information.

We examine your existing website and with input from the staff, analyze how the site can best be structured for users to find information. After the preliminary designs and site outline have been approved, Soulie Designs will finish the website.

Search Engine Optimization

Our search engine optimization (SEO) specialists can help get your website to the top of major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. We can also help you manage your online advertising with Google Ad Words.

Website Maintenance

We can continue to update your website, if desired. If you would prefer to look after the website yourself, we recommend using Adobe Dreamweaver CS4. If you require more extensive web maintenance, we can also create or implement a content management system (CMS) to suit your business needs.

Follow-On Work

After we finishes the website, the rest is up to you. Many clients contract with us to provide additional services such as business cards, pocket folders, trifold brochures, large corporate brochures, product sheet shells, direct mail, postcards, PowerPoint presentations, trade show materials and more.

What is CMS?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, search and publish various kinds of digital media and electronic text.

CMS's are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content. These concepts represent integrated and interdependent layers. There are various nomenclatures known in this area: Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management, Digital Records Management, Electronic Content Management and so on. The bottom line for these systems is managing content and publishing, with a workflow if required.

What can we do for you?

Content Management Systems and Web Design go hand in hand. Our team can build any form of CMS whether it be a custom built system to suit your business and your business alone, to a standard "out of the box" system.

We specialize in custom components, modules and interfaces which will give you the freedom to decide how you'd like your website to look and what kind of functionality it needs. We build our CMS using Joomla! as a base system but with our own special touch, we have evolved the Joomla! system to be more than just a CMS.

If you or your business require being able to update the website yourself, then a CMS is the best option for you!

What is Flash?

Flash is a vector animation software, originally designed to create animations for display on web pages. Vector graphics are ideal for the web because they are so lightweight.

What can we do for you? 

Looking for an interesting, visually compelling animation for your website or online promotion? We can help. We have extensive experience building Flash animations for small and large organizations alike.

Now, Flash animation is not for every web site, but for customers with faster internet connections the razzle and dazzle can be very impressive. We will help you in determining if Flash is in the best interests of your customers. We can also implement different degrees of Flash animation such as, full Flash sites, partial or minimal animation.

If you are looking for a Flash presentation, introduction page, navigation or an entire flash driven web site, we can turn your dream into a reality. We use state of the art equipment and the latest version software to develop your graphics and website.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

What can we do for you? 

What's the point of having a great looking website if no one ever finds it?

No matter how good your site looks it won't attract visitors if people don't know it exists. You may never realize the enormous potential of taking your business online unless you find a way of driving prospective customers to your website.

In this fast pace age of internet marketing, smart operators are realising that the best way to capture an online market, and generate new business is to optimise their website for search engines. SEO is a reliable and highly cost effective marketing technique to increase your traffic from search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. All you have to do is choose the right company to do the work.

Our SEO specialists can help get your website to the top of major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. We can also help you manage your online advertising with Google Ad Words. As a client, you can rest assured that the SEO consulting you’re receiving is based on genuine experience and an ethos to put the customer first.

As an SEO client, you’ll receive a comprehensive report on user search behaviour in your market with identified opportunities for keywords for your site to target. This research drives the technical optimisation process to ensure your website is capable of not just generating high levels of traffic, but the right kind of traffic for sales and more enquiries.

"Your customers are already looking for you? Just help them, find you"

The work doesn’t stop there. With proven results behind us, Soulie Designs Web Development will work with you on an ongoing basis making recommendations for further development and keyword targeting to continually grow your traffic. Regular reporting will give you all you need to see the results you’re getting from your natural search engine optimisation campaign.

What is Corporate Branding? 

Corporate branding is the practice of using a company's name as a product brand name. It is an attempt to leverage corporate brand equity to create product brand recognition. It is a type of family branding or umbrella brand. Disney, for example, includes the word "Disney" in the name of many of its products; among many other examples are IBM, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola.

Corporate branding can result in significant economies of scope since one advertising campaign can be used for several products. It also facilitates new product acceptance because potential buyers are already familiar with the name. Proper brand marketing is probably one of the most important things a company who is trying to break into a market and billions of dollars could be spent to try and make this happen.

Websites have also started to play a large role in corporate branding, the Internet is becoming more and more commercial and paid advertising is showing up on nearly everything. This is another touchpoint not listed above. The web's influence on companies has been extensive because it is a medium for exposure that has not been around very long and many companies have yet to really embrace this new form.

What can we do for you? 

The foundation for any corporate design project - be it stationery, brochures, or website - is first-rate branding. If you don't have an effective logo, you've lost the battle before it has even begun.

In fact, we begin many marketing projects by first designing or redesigning a company's logo. Why? Because all companies need a great logo, and most companies that already have one need a much better look and feel than the one they've got. By going through our logo design process, organizations discover the most effective messaging for their business.

Our Process

In a typical logo design process, we do the following:

1. Hold a discussion to explore the organizations needs, desires, competition, partners, and most importantly, client or customers.
2. Perform marketing research of the organization's competitors, other similar businesses, target audiences, service offerings, etc.
3. Evaluate the corporate identity and look and feel of each competitor to ensure that the new identity will be positioned competitively.
4. Design a unique corporate identity, beginning with a new logo, using information gained in the marketing research. For many organizations, we will then design business cards, letterhead, envelopes, shipping labels and a fax form.

What can we do for you? 

We create beautiful, highly branded corporate brochures, product sheets, pocket folders, and other printed marketing materials. We also create effective business cards, direct mail pieces, such as postcards and promotional mailers.

We can help our clients with:

• Strategy - What is the goal of the product? Which audiences would you like to reach? What size would be the most effective?
• Business Card Design - We design beautiful, stylish business cards to suit your corporate image, we can print these on various types of cards, all shapes and sizes.
• Brochure Design - Using the client's input, we develop a brochure that meets all the objectives created in the Strategy phase. We focus on creating attractive, compelling pieces that will inspire customers to take the actions you desire.
• Brochure Copy - We write easy-to-comprehend, persuasive text for your brochure or postcard.
• Printing Coordination - Using our long-established relationships with top-quality printing companies, we coordinate the brochure's printing, ensuring that the brochure arrives on time and within budget.

What is a Domain Name?

Domain Names are hostnames that identify computers on the Internet. These names appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites (e.g., www.souliedesigns.com).

What is a Web Host?

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.

What can we do for you?

Web Hosting

A very important decision you have to make if you decide to have a sophisticated website is what type of server will be best to use for hosting your business. A site available on the web is hosted on a server. It gives you space online and brings traffic to your site.

You have the option of choosing from two types of servers as you consider your internet website hosting needs. Shared servers are often used by small business websites or private homepages. The other type of server is a dedicated server.

We will guide you through this process and help you decide which Hosting Service is right for you.

Domain Names

Registering a domain name is a smple task however there are a few items to look for in a domain name.

You have your business idea and you need to select a domain name. Your domain name is the "logo", the "advertisement" and more of your company. Just because your business is an internet business and not a "brick-and-mortar" it does not mean you can select any name as your domain name and people will come.

When selecting a domain name you can go to any domain name registrar online and search for domain names in your niche business idea. Keep in mind when selecting your domain name you want to use your keyword(s) or keyword phrase that you are using for your business idea.

If you can't decide or find a domain name suitable for you, we can certainly help you make your decision and guide you through the process, or we will take full control over domain names and hosting if you'd prefer.