Consulting

Many businesses hire "Web Designers" to build their Websites. Smart business owners employ digital media consultants to plan, produce and manage their Websites, knowing that "Web Design" is just one small ingredient in a successful online strategy.

With 14 years' experience dealing with Websites, Internet marketing and digital media, we understand the depth and complexity involved. It is so much more than simply "getting a Website". Regardless of the type of business you are in, succeeding in today's digital world requires a great deal of research, planning, strategy, creative input and technical expertise.

By engaging Cyrius as "Your digital media consultant", you can be sure that your project is taken care of in every critical aspect required for success.

There are three ways to engage us:

1. Management Consultancy - Where we manage the entire project; consulting, planning, strategy, production and marketing. This is the most common arrangement, because we have our own production team.
2. Consulting/Coaching - Regular meetings to advise, guide and support you with your project, regardless of which companies are engaged to do the specific production or marketing work.
3. Ad hoc Consulting - Advice, ideas and strategy. Available as a face-to-face two-hour meeting.

What we do as Digital Media Management Consultants:

• Work with you to determine your goals (e.g. branding, marketing, PR, increasing search engine traffic or establishing a brand new enterprise)
• Identify any specific issues and challenges that your business is facing
• Use our knowledge and experience to work out the best solutions for you, from a design, marketing, technical and business perspective
• Work with you to develop great ideas and tactics
• Develop a detailed digital media plan, that covers features, actions, technical specifications and cost estimates
• Identify opportunities you may not have thought about
• Follow through with assessments, reports, re-evaluations and upgrades as the project evolves and matures.

Engaging a consultant on your digital media project could be the most important thing you do. Don't risk your business by embarking on a project without expert guidance. We hear too many horror stories from those who tried to go it alone. Make your story a success story.

Every Website deserves to be done with great care and treated as a unique entity, as it represents a unique business. We have all seen our fair share of average-to-poor Websites. We have also seen Websites that really impress and succeed. Where do you want your Website to fit in?

Serious about your business? Get Cyrius.

Here are some questions you might like to consider before starting your project:

1. How competitive is the market for your business? Is it a new market with only a few players, or a mature market that already has many competitors?
2. How much do you know about establishing a Website?
3. Do you see a Website as a business expense or a business asset?
4. How much do you think you should spend on designing and developing your Website?
5. How much do you think you will need to spend on marketing your Website?
6. Do you understand the technologies involved in Websites? Coding? Hosting?
7. Do you know the points of difference between a good and a bad Website?
8. After your Website launches, do you know what the next steps are?
9. Do you know the extent to which your Website's performance can be measured?
10. Do you know how Google works?
11. How much do you know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising?
12. How will you assess and measure the value of your site?
13. When comparing quotes and service providers, do you know what factors might cause you to be comparing apples and oranges?
14. If you have been given a fixed quote for a Website without the provider asking you a lot of thorough questions, do you wonder how they could have possibly known enough about your business to have done this?

What role does a Website play in your business?

A Website is so much more than a set of pages with images and text on a screen. It is an active and dynamic medium that exists within the World Wide Web and interacts with both people and computers in countless different ways. A Website performs a huge number of tasks for your business:

• Reacting to users' actions
• Triggering programming code to perform functions
• Collecting statistics, both on the hosting server and in tools such as Google Analytics
• Displaying information from databases
• Displaying information collected from other Websites
• Saving information to databases
• Sending confirmation emails to your clients and to you
• Processing payments that go into your bank account
• Linking to other relevant Websites
• Getting linked to by other Websites
• Getting the content collected and indexed by Search Engines
• Sending out newsletters
• Tracking visitor usage
• Communicating your company brand and style
• Positioning you in the marketplace alongside your competitors
• Qualifying visitors before they make contact with you
• Providing a point of contact
• Supporting any word-of-mouth referrals
• Establishing your credibility and reputation
• Countless other functions and services.

The idea that you can pass the responsibility of all of this business activity to a "Web Designer" and think that it will all be done right is pretty far-fetched. Yet this is what most people do. With so much responsibility to perform for your business, your Website must be managed professionally by a team who understand what is involved and how important it is to your business.

 

 

Internet = Opportunity

Are you optimized for the networked world? Whatever you are doing, you can do better.

Not sure yet?

Please feel free to check out our web design portfolio, where you can see first-hand how we work, and what we can do for you.