St. Louis Website Design

Why Do I Need A Customized Website?

This is a question that we get all the time and the simplest answer is that a customized website allows you to better communicate with your target audience and express your brand through unique page elements. In today’s digital landscape, your website acts as a virtual version of your business that has the capability to reach new customers across the U.S. and even the world.

With that kind of power and reach, why wouldn’t you want to invest time and money to ensure that your site is well-structured and functions exactly the way you want it to?

Our design, development, and strategy teams all come together to create customized websites that are highly functional, accessible, search-engine friendly and align with our client’s unique goals. The popular alternative to custom websites is template sites. Although these options are often cheaper, they offer limited features in terms of layout, page features, and functionality.

With a custom site, you won’t have to spend extra time trying to work around limitations and sacrificing performance. Instead, you’ll be working with a website that is user-friendly (on the front and back end), moldable to shifting industry trends or company goals, and offers a unique design that helps you to stand out from all the rest.

Our Website Design Process

Now onto an important factor when choosing an agency – process. The term “process” can be pretty vague but usually, it’s interpreted as how things get done. This is often where design agencies differ the most and can be the defining factor in whether a potential client is won or lost.

We understand that clients appreciate visibility into how an agency operates and how milestones are achieved. You deserve reassurance that there’s structure and a timeline to ensure that a website project is on the right track and important deadlines are met. The good news is, that our design process is pretty straightforward.

Discovery

We start with a “Discovery” phase which includes a sitemap and wireframe. The sitemap simply serves as a visualization of how we envision your pages being laid out in the navigation and what type of content will go on each page. From there we move into a wireframe presentation which displays the site layout in a series of boxes. The best way to think about a wireframe is as the backbone or skeleton of your website before the muscle is added.

Design

Once everything has been approved from the discovery phase, we then move into design. This phase is undoubtedly one of the most exciting parts because this is when you’ll get a real idea as to how your site is actually going to look. We’ll present you with a style guide which will outline the colors, fonts and other visual elements that will be implemented on your site. We’ll go into as much detail as you need around why we made the decisions we did, but most times it all ties back to user experience and performance. You’ll get two rounds of comps with plenty of time to review and provide feedback.

Formal Handoff To Development

As mentioned above, we allow plenty of time for review and client feedback before handing the design off to development. We want to make sure that you’re happy with the design before solidifying it in code. Once we’ve gotten your approval, we then formally hand the design off to our development team so that they can bring it to life. This is the last step of the design process specifically, but your website redesign doesn’t end there. The next process after design is development, followed by content collection/entry, testing and eventually launch!

What Makes Our St. Louis Website Design Services Different?

Let’s be real, that’s what you really want to know and we get it. There are a million and one design agencies across the U.S. that claim to “redefine” the process of design. We’ll tell you right now that we’re not a sheek New York agency with an office filled with plush leather sofas and trendy neon signs saying things like “The Future is Yours to Create” or “Good Vibes Only”.

Not that there’s anything wrong with places like that, it’s just not us. Regarding how we design at Matchbox, we combine three essential elements – strategy, collaboration, and responsiveness.

Strategy

At Matchbox we believe in strategic design which is a little less about art and a lot more about performance. This form of design introduces different aspects of digital strategy such as UI/UX, accessibility, content strategy, SEO, etc. Looks are important, but they’re not everything. The best designs grab the user’s attention, hold that attention and then turn that attention into a conversion.

Collaboration

We encourage collaboration between each team within Matchbox. Instead of remaining segmented, we come together and share ideas to create designs that have been touched by content strategists, developers, and SEO specialists. It’s this passion for collaboration that has fueled our success and created such strong long-lasting relationships with our clients.

Responsiveness

We prioritize responsiveness meaning that we go the extra mile to ensure that your site looks good and functions across all devices. We will help create this cross-platform visualization by providing comps for desktop, tablets, and mobile devices. In a fast-moving world, your success relies on a user’s ability to access your site at any time and anywhere.

Matchbox Design Group developed a high-quality, reliable website on time. They were also very patient and helpful, providing guidance on the process and valuable input on ways to improve the final product. Their responsiveness and customer-centric approach made the engagement seamless.

Business Manager Health & Fitness Association