Implementation: Building full service web platforms

EWebsite overhauls are big projects, with lofty goals, staffers pulled from their day-to-day work into unknown territory, internal office politics, and organizationally existential questions about how you present your work to the world. Our process seeks to address these many moving parts, and we approach our work as expert collaborators and facilitators, here to guide you through it all.

Our primary north stars are User Experience (UX), Information Architecture (IA), and Accessibility. UX focuses on both your audiences and your own organizational and staff needs and user flows, while IA will scaffold both your content strategy and how we assemble your new system. As to access, we work with you to think through multiple “ways in” to your content: from navigation menus to graphics, buttons, intelligent ‘related content’ modules, and ‘call to action’ follow-ups.

One of our strongest tenets is ‘you own your website.’ We build a site based on process-driven specifications, train your staff on how to manage everything, and hand over the keys at launch. Our philosophy is to never withhold anything and to put the Client in control.

Toward this goal, we gravitate to industry-standard, fee-free, open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) that allows for complete customization by our designers and coders. This robust platform can not only be customized to a ‘T’ but also provides efficiencies through select (and vetted) plug-ins, along with standard CMS functionality including file and media uploads, SEO, revision tracking, contact form creation, and much more.

Social Ink is devoted to best practices when it comes to coding for accessibility, web standards, and providing access for those with disabilities. For more, please see our statement on accessibility.

Our full service web expertise:

• Fully hosted WordPress open-source instances, tailored to perfection for all your needs, from more straightforward informational sites to heavy-duty data crunchers
• Translation and/or multilingual capabilities, with detailed discovery and suggestions around machine translation vs human-powered
• E-commerce with Shopify for all external, ready-to-roll shopping platforms
• Squarespace or WordPress.org for quick assistance with hosted small-scale sites
• Eventbrite for events management, ticketing and robust multiplatform integration
• Zapier, Mailchimp, Emma and other APIs that integrate to provide mailing or CRM services for your site
• Salesforce’s immense wealth of knowledge, interconnection and client or member management
• Newer ‘newsletter’ platforms such as Ghost, Beehiv, Substack or CraftCMS

Finally, we believe all websites should be responsive, with a fluid design that adjusts to different screen sizes and devices such as iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices. This device-agnostic approach retains basic functionality with older browsers, operating systems, and devices through graceful reflowing while enabling exciting new capabilities.