Web design with
your business in mind
The Howle Creative difference
Wondering what sets Howle Creative apart from every other web design or creative agency?
Design quality
We take a holistic approach to design. We understand that it doesn't matter how great a website looks if it lacks functionality and vice versa. Our sites don't just look good, they're an asset for our clients.
Great planning
We work alongside you to come up with the game plan your website deserves from day one. We won’t charge you for a proposal.
Transperancy
We carefully outline your entire project scope before any work actually begins so you know exactly what to expect.
Communication
You'll receive weekly reports on project progress and are always welcome to contact us if you have any questions.
Partnership
Most importantly, we work alongside you to create the website of your dreams!
At some agencies, you’re just another project, another client…
But we know that you’re looking for something more. You’re looking for a partnership, and we are too.
Website design process
Discovery
In our initial consultation, we’ll discover if we’re the right fit for your business and project scope. In this stage, we’ll also listen to your goals and wanted objectives and begin our online research into your business. Once this phase is complete, we’ll deliver a tailored proposal to you with what we can do to help you succeed.
Research
We research and analysis your business using a variety of tools to look at what your business and customer needs are:
Needs – we take a strategic approach to assess the most vital needs of your business; looking at long-term objectives and current brand positioning.
Research – this includes competitor and industry research. We also look at existing analytics in Google Analytics and Search Console to give essential information about user behavior if your business has an existing website. We’ll also study your current site’s performance; looking at the user flow, pages that users ‘drop off’, average view time, and bounce rate. We typically look over the last year’s data to get a realistic picture over time.
Site goals review – we determine the customer and business needs the website must address, and what functionalities are required to achieve this.
Conversion review – conversions can be call-back requests, contact form completion, offers redeemed, online sales, phone calls recorded from the site, or download content requests. We’ll assess what elements are converting well, and not so well.
Visitor persona creation – crucial to the process, this involves developing typical user-profiles that will influence the design process. By learning about each type of user’s needs and creating a user flow chart, we can enhance the experience of each user.
Identify functionality requirements – we create a technical specification document that outlines how we’ll build the website.
Design
These components enable us to maintain a strategic overview when making decisions throughout the website design process:
Sitemap creation – here we identify pages (like a contents table), as well as the hierarchy of the pages. We decide the pages to keep and remove and may restructure top-level navigation to improve user experience.
Sketched low fidelity wireframes – we’ll create an outline of the site as a starting point to view the visual design and structure the website will need. This helps illustrate how the content and functionality will be laid out on a page, as well as helping us consider user needs and journey.
Flow/process diagrams – we map out user flows through the site from landing to conversion.
Content and SEO
Creating excellent website content is a major step towards achieving your website and messaging goals.
Content review – whether it’s a new business start-up or a long-established business, creating content involves assessing what information will be needed to tell your story, choosing the key marketing messages, and what the business style and tone of voice will be.
Content plan creation – we either work with clients to develop new copy or our writers draft the copy. This is a real collaboration between us that ensures the content aligns with your goals and messaging.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – For this, we use tools SEMRush, Moz, Web Page Test and Google Webmasters.
- SEO strategy creation – we create an SEO strategy plan that will help elevate your business from launch.
Website design
During this stage, our web designers are in their element; building and testing to ensure the website is fast and functional.
This is the most technical part of the build and where we:
Setup Hosting – we setup the hosting platform on Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, or Shopify.
Install Content Management System (CMS) – the cms is the hub of your website.
Install/Setup plugins and 3rd party CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools – examples of these include marketing automation tool SharpSpring, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Hubspot. If we are building a real estate website, this is the phase in which we begin integrating an MLS solution. We currently work with IDX Broker and iHomefinder.
Populate site content – we add the agreed content throughout the site.
Optimize code – this improves site speed, which is great for SEO.
Cross-browser and device testing – we test that the website works perfectly on all browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Edge, or Firefox, as well as across devices, including desktop, tablet and mobile (iOS and Android).
Design revisions – we typically have two rounds of amends to finalize and finesse the website for a soft launch.
Website Launch
Here we’ll run a series of final checks and make sure you have the knowledge needed to start working with your new site. This includes:
- Final SEO checklists – we run a final SEO audit.
- Install tracking tools – such as Google Analytics and Google Webmaster. This will help you analyze website performance and enable you to make educated marketing decisions.
- Client training – we provide a one-hour training and easy CMS ‘how-to’ manual so that clients can quickly and easily add new content, images, and video and create landing pages to keep the website fresh.
- Website maintenance – we offer one month of free website maintenance to fix any issues that crop up post-launch.
Website Maintenance
Your website looks great now… so what’s to maintain?
To make sure our clients keep their website in tip-top shape, we recommend that anyone with a CMS website invests in a support and maintenance plan. This involves three main elements:
- CMS and plugin updates – to prevent hacking and increase security.
- Security checks – to ensure your website is secure and backed up.
- Content updates – we do minor content updates.