FUNCTION…
Don’t Just Sit There! Do Something!
How many times have you visited a web site that is flashy, even gorgeous, but you can’t figure out why you’re even there? Or maybe you came there wishing to be able to do something (such as make a purchase, or request more information), but can’t? Or here’s a favorite: when have you found yourself staring at a site that takes forever to download, forever to respond? A site should not only look good, but work well. True, some of these function issues overlap with design priorities, but some of them a related to whether the website development team knows anything beyond pretty pictures and nice color combinations.
E-Commerce Options
We programmed our first e-commerce application in 2001, so you might say that we’ve been doing it for a while. Our FlexisShop custom shopping cart offers the advantages of being totally customizable, and we’ve been customizing according to different customer needs for the last 7 years or so. If you find that just about every shopping cart you look at is almost, but not quite, right for you, definitely give us a holler. We specialize in making “almost” into “just what I wanted.”
But in addition, we’ve programmed e-commerce solutions for online donations, virtual classroom signups, real-time credit cart authorization, even paid membership websites. If you think of a way you can make money online, we can help you make it a reality.
Better Customer Service is Easy…Just Communicate Better
One of the most dramatic advantages of the Internet is the options it offers you for strengthening your lines of communication with your customers, and often while reducing your customer service costs at the same time. We’re able to help you identify your communication bottlenecks and apply the correct communication tool to address them. Sometimes it’s merely a matter of having an online “contact us” form, but we don’t stop there. Blogs, Wiki’s, Live Chat – all of these tools will allow you to get your message across more clearly, and allow your customers to do the same for you.
We can even program a solution that will integrate online communications with your mobile phone. For example our real estate websites will send a customer service request directly to the mobile phone of the website owner as a text message. Instant response = one happy customer.
Managing Data and Content
It’s a technology thing. Most of our customers feel like they’re at the mercy of tech guys too much. We don’t blame them. So we’ve worked hard to put as much control in the hands of our clients as possible. For example our FlexisShop shopping cart allows you to manage all your items and photos on your own, without having to come to us for assistance, and without needing any technical knowledge.
One of our most popular types of website is a Content Management System (CMS) website. CMS allows you to make most changes to the content of your website yourself, without any special technical knowledge. You can change text, photos, add and delete pages, add in hyperlinks, all without knowing any HTML (the “language” of the Internet). There are lots of stock CMS packages on the market (if you’ve have heard of names like Joomla, Drupal, PHP-Nuke, Mambo, and a dozen others, that’s what those packages are all about). The problem we find with packaged CMS systems is that they have about 5 times the features, and 5 times the complexity, that our customers really want. So we wrote our own, based on our experience sitting next to customers and seeing what they really wanted in a CMS application.
We also specialize in database-driven websites and have experience with MS SQL-Server and MySQL (if you don’t know those terms, don’t sweat it, it just means we use the same technology as people like Yahoo and Facebook). A database-driven website allows you to tie your website into any type of data you can imagine in an efficient manner.
Do You Believe in “One Size Fits All”…Really?
Custom Programming Solutions
At FLEXISS, we pride ourselves on the ability to deliver custom functionality for your particular needs. We program in PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Flash, Flex, Javascript. We’ve been able to deliver everything from basic website functions to intranets to things like office productivity applications — all based on particular client needs. Of course we’re happy to recommend a one size fits all solution if that’s what will work best for you. But it’s nice to know that with FLEXISS the only limit to the functionality you offer your visitors is your imagination.
Measuring and Tracking Your Progress
The only way to improve your site is to measure it’s progress. How many people have visited your site? When? How did they find you? When someone visits your site, do they convert into a paying customer? All of these questions have answers. And those answers can help you improve sales, increase customer satisfaction, and avoid costly mistakes. There’s a wealth of tools for tracking and measuring the performance of your site, and we can help you put them to work for your online business model.