design services

designing for the web

sea.ca provides its clients with complete web project management services. Central to this goal is the design of your web site itself -- sea.ca's design methodology encompasses four stages:

  • web site design and brand development
  • quality and web standards
  • testing and delivery
  • content updates and site maintenance

web site design and brand development

Site Interface and Architecture

The visual design of your web site says much about your company; however, the key to making sure your users get the most out of your web site has less to do with funky graphics than it does with usability.

The sea.ca team knows what works on the web -- and what doesn't.

Since usability is a key factor in the success of your web site, sea.ca pays particular attention to the creation of an intuitive experience for your site's users. We identify the best ways to present the site's content and achieve optimum usability and accessibility. During this process, sea.ca will produce simple diagrams that map the site's information flow and hierarchy.

Graphics Design

Once the site's architecture has been finalized, sea.ca will introduce colour, branding, and other graphic devices to develop the web site's "look and feel."

In developing the design of the web site, sea.ca seeks your input to determine the design objectives. Considerations might include:

  • use of an existing logo
  • integration of supplied style guides
  • new design inspired by examples of other websites
  • completely new design, logo, and brand development

sea.ca will produce a visual concept that defines the look and feel of the site's landing page. This will be presented to you for approval, and any feedback will be integrated into the final design.

Layout and Production

Upon approval of the concept, sea.ca will proceed with the development of the web site:

  • Page layouts are created in CSS and XHTML.
  • Necessary logos, graphics, illustrations, photos, etc. are developed.
  • New imagery is manipulated and optimized for the web environment.

quality and standards

Accessibility and Web Standards

sea.ca develops web sites to the highest possible standards: XHTML 1.0 and CSS 1 & 2.

XHTML 1.0 is the current incarnation of HTML, the scripting language used to display content in all web browsers. Working alongside XHTML, CSS is a powerful tool that controls the web site's layout and presentation. In this way, the content and presentation elements of your site are controlled separately.

Benefits include:

  • faster loading web site due to efficient code
  • lower hosting costs due to smaller file sizes
  • more visitors from improved access from search engines
  • highly accessible web site
  • centralized presentation elements reduce maintenance
  • separation of content from presentation elements facilitates updates

Compatibility

Web sites designed by sea.ca are optimized for all standards-compliant web browsers on the Windows, Mac OS, and Linux platforms. This ensures that your web site will function and look the same to all users. Compliant browsers include:

  • Mozilla Firefox 1 and above
  • Netscape Navigator 6 and above
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and above
  • Opera 7.2 and above
  • Safari

testing and delivery

sea.ca's testing process allows you to witness the evolution and implementation of features of your web site as they become available. This approach is facilitated by a staging server, which allows developments to be privately viewed and tested in a secure on-line location.

This process ensures that both you and sea.ca are always at a mutual understanding and agreement of the project's progress and can be confident that all functional requirements are met at appropriate milestones; as such, any problems or miscommunications are exposed sooner, rather than later and can therefore be resolved swiftly and effectively.

As part of the fully-managed web hosting services offered by sea.ca, your web site will be made live on-line once all aspects of the project have been completed. Clients may also elect to have their web site delivered for self-deployment.

content updates and site maintenance

New, evolving content is essential to the success of your web presence over time, and sea.ca offers a full complement of services to integrate a program of regular content updates and web site maintenance into your project.

Ongoing services include:

  • one-time or scheduled-interval addition of provided content updates
  • optimization of text, graphics, and photos for publication
  • writing and development of custom update content
  • electronic newsletter creation, management, and distribution
  • web site visitor statistics monitoring, analysis, and reporting
  • consulting services for deployment of overall on-line strategy
  • web server maintenance, optimization, and configuration

The fulfillment of these activities enables you to achieve the best results and greatest return from your web site. This is why fully-managed web hosting by sea.ca includes many such services as the logical next step after completing the design of your web site.

sea.ca delivers web sites with results.

Valid XHTML 1.0 Valid CSS