WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT
Balance
It's the ideal we strive for in all aspects of life and business. And, striking a balance in your interactive communications is what Stamats does best. An effective Web site must strike a balance between:
- Architecture: a logical road map that makes it easy for visitors to find information about you
- Design: a visual composition that makes a dramatic first impression
- Content: the words that inform, and just as importantly, engage your visitors
- Brand: reinforcing the consistent, key messages (your brand promise) that are connected both visually and editorially to all of your marketing communications
The Six Second Rule
Research shows that six seconds is all the time your Web site has to impress prospective students. If your site fails to immediately impress them, your school may never make the prospect's short list. It's just as tough with prospective donors and alumni. These visitors want to associate with winning organizations. A weak Web site just can't push the connection you're building.
You need a site that passes the six-second test, then goes further. Here's what Stamats can do to strike the perfect balance for your Web site and make sure you pass the six second rule:
- Creativity and Strategy: Stamats can provide you with a creative site that your audience(s) will respond to. We infuse all creative projects with both science (the research that provides direction) and award-winning art (writing and design).
- Engineering: In addition to having a site with a strategic and engaging design, your site must be engineered to perfection. Your target audiences have high expectations—a picture that looks out of place, hard to find information, a broken link, or a broken template degrades your image. Stamats integrates our creative staff's designs into sites that work, assessing quality assurance at every step.
- Measurement: To be effective, your Web site must deliver results—these results may be measured by monitoring your hits, unique users, new student applications, new enrollments, annual fund gifts, or even the amount of time and effort it takes your staff to ensure the Web is effectively building relationships with your audiences. As part of our process, we work with you to define the baseline metrics upon which the success of your site should be measured.
- User Experience: To make sure your internal and external audiences view your Web site as the primary source for information, it is critical that your site be developed and designed based on their interests and needs. Stamats works with you to build a site that creates a relationship between your institution and your audiences. Stamats leverages our extensive knowledge of your audiences and their preferences and habits as we develop sites. For example, we will often refer to the results from our annual research (TeensTALK® and ParentsTALK®) studies and draw from our ongoing usability tests to ensure the site navigation and layout makes sense to your target audiences.