WAE Technologies specializes is web development and web hosting for small to medium sized businesses, and not-for-profit organizations. Integration with the Titan administration interface allows for easy maintenance of our websites.
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Websites 101

Purpose

The purpose of this portion of the website is to help you better understand what to expect once you start to integrate the website into your business. We're going to present quite a few ideas and processes in this document. Fortunately, we handle quite a few of these items so you don't need to. For example, we will handle all the technical details of implementation from building the site to making the site visible to the world; but, we do not generally draft content or the bulk of the information that will be on the website.

Content is king

Content will make or break a website. What is content? Content is the message that you are trying to get across. If you are a magazine, then content is the articles that you want to publish. If your business is a dance studio, then your content is your upcoming events and tutorials. If you are a school then your content is the curriculum, class descriptions, and campus information. See a pattern?

Content plays a major role in the initial processes of designing a website. Together, we will discover exactly what your business's content is, and then decide how to best represent it on the web. This discovery process will often times include creation of mock-ups to represent how the information will be displayed. Since content is paramount to the success of the website, we take this process very seriously, and will therefore spend a lot of time in this area.

Supporting graphics/branding

Your business is yours. We want to make your website yours as well. Therefore, the website should remind the visitor of your business. If you run a restaurant with dark burgundy wallpaper and ornate lettering on the menus, does it not make sense to design the website to look and feel the same way?

We'll work with you to round up all the example colors, graphics, and themes from your business so that we can create for you a website that better mirrors reality.

Site architectural design

Every website requires different architectural design depending on the intended purpose of the website. A website that sells shoes will look much different than a website that allows parents to schedule a summer camp for their children. The shoe vendor will need a design that allows the visitor to find attractive shoes among the 1000's available, compare the attributes of each, and make a buying decision. Such a design would more than likely be very clean and open so that a large amount of information can be skimmed rapidly. On the other hand, the summer camp website will want its visitors to engage is exploration and discovery. A parent who has become excited about the thrills of the camp is more likely to sign their child up for a 4-week camp instead of a 2-week camp, right?

Bottom line, what constitutes good design for one business's website is not necessarily what's best for another. WAE Technologies, Inc understands business needs and will find the right design for your website.

Integration with Business Goals

A website is most valuable to a business when its purpose matches the goal of the business. WAE Technologies, Inc evaluates your near-term and long-term goals and works with you to develop a technical roadmap for your website. It is proven that a website that is tightly bound to a business and its goals will help that business grow quicker while providing more complete solutions to potential customers.

Estimation

We stand by our estimates! After the planning for the website is completed WAE Technologies, Inc will provide you a comprehensive and accurate quote. You'll know the total costs before we begin development and you'll know the timeline to completion. WAE Technologies, Inc's proven track record will stand as a testament to our commitment to providing accurate estimates, every time.

Hosting

Once the website is designed and constructed it needs to be placed on a server and made available to the world. Hosting companies are responsible for the connection to the Internet and often times the server on which the website runs. Hosting companies usually will guarantee uptime (eg, 99.99%) which is the percentage of time that the website will be available. No hosting company can guarantee 100% due to unforeseen circumstances such as massive hardware failure (computers do burn out eventually), extensive power outages, or general Internet connection failure.

WAE Technologies, Inc utilizes hosts with a proven track record and hardware powerful enough to keep your website running optimally at all times (well, 99.99% of the time, at least).

e-Commerce

Selling products on the web is one of the most sought after functions of a website. Business owners are attracted to e-Commerce because success in e-Commerce directly translates into profit. It is easy to justify the cost of a website when the website itself will generate revenue from non-local shoppers.

While e-Commerce is wonderful, there are some steps involved in being able to receive and process orders over the website. Below we'll list just some of the considerations. WAE Technologies, Inc will be able to assist you in every step of the process, though some of the steps (such as acquiring an SSL Certificate, establishing a Payment Gateway and Merchant Services Account) will require legal documents from your company.

SSL Certificate

This certificate is what allows you to process credit cards online. The Certificate serves two purposes-it authenticates your identity and allows for privacy of the transaction information, including the credit card number.

You will typically only need one SSL Certificate per site. Often, there are upfront and recurring costs to SSL Certificates, as well as levels of compatibility. Please contact us if you'd like more general information regarding certificate technology or acquiring your own SSL Certificate.

Merchant Services Account

The Merchant Services Account (MSA) is the company responsible for actually interfacing with the banking institutions during credit card processing. You need to have an account with the MSA to process cards. Often times your bank may be able to provide this account.

Payment Gateway

The Payment Gateway is a company that has interfaces for MSA's. You will deal directly with these companies when issues arise during payment processing. Examples of Payment Gateways include authorize.net, verisign.net, etc.

Supplier

The supplier (or suppliers) is the party that actually will ship the goods to the buyer. This is also sometimes called the "fulfillment house." All suppliers will need to be identified and a system will need to be created that allows the supplier to be made aware of orders placed on the website.