{ services }

At Cardiff Creative, we are all things web. We make no claims that we can build you a great server, or produce an amazing video segment. That's not our expertise and we'll tell you that up front. We will however point you in the right direction to work with one of our talented partners that can deliver in spades on those types of requests. What we will promise you is that we are THE experts in all things pertaining to your website, whether it be your Search Engine Marketing campaign, a user-centric interface design or a complex content management system. We will guide you through the process of requirements gathering, web branding, content rich copy and scalable architecture solutions that will provide you and your customers with a robust and easy to use website that they will return to time and time again.

Website Design and Usability [open]

Nothing lasts longer then that first impression. Your company showcased for the world to see. Will your customers or market love it or hate it? Will they enjoy the experience or click away? Can you engage them and convert them to long time customers? These are the questions we solve with our user-centric web designs.

Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist. Usability incorporates a wide range of web experience elements, from the way the customer’s eyes glance through your site design, to the ease of navigating your site, to valid CSS and XHTML for fast loading pages and fast duplication of pages and content changes and SEO. All of these elements combined create a user-friendly experience.

A site that’s difficult to navigate is even harder to tolerate. Cardiff Creative’s User Experience team combines in-depth user research and industrial-strength common sense to develop usable and consistent brand experiences. We work closely with users, designers, and engineers to develop structured interactive systems for information architecture, navigation, and user experience.

Our methodology is clear, concise and produces results:

1. Requirements Analysis

  • Determine the goals for the website from the perspective of the user and the business.
  • Determine the user needs and target usability requirements.
  • Evaluate existing versions of the site.
  • Perform a competitive analysis.
  • Perform user interviews and surveys.

2. Conceptual Design

  • Sketch out a site design and architecture at an abstract level.
  • Conduct a task analysis to find critical features.

3. Mockups / Prototypes

  • Rapidly create visual representations (mockups) or interactive representations (prototypes) of the site.
  • Evaluate usability through focus groups, user tests, and walkthroughs.
  • Use the evaluation results to create more mockups or improve the prototypes.
  • Repeat this process (design iteration) until the design and usability goals are met

4. Production

  • Create the final product.
  • Evaluate functionality through testing, quality assurance, usability testing, and field testing
  • Use the evaluation results to improve the product.
  • Repeat this process (production iteration) until the business goals are met.

5. Launch and Maintenance

  • Launch the website.
  • Maintain and refine with user feedback.
  • Use the feedback to create new requirements, and begin major design improvements (system iteration).

Website Development and Custom Programming [open]

Cardiff Creative web site development services include architecting and developing custom web sites, web applications, portals and e-commerce sites as well as providing maintenance services and extended customer support.

We have considerable experience in developing scalable and robust e-business solutions including:

  • Ecommerce web site development
  • Content Management Systems
  • Internet Portals
  • Application integration services
  • Corporate portals
  • Customer Relationship Management
  • Secure Intranets and Extranets
  • Custom Database driven web applications
  • Consultation for Server selection (Shared, Virtual, Dedicated)
  • Domain and Hosting registration

We always strive to create intuitive, user-friendly interfaces to complex back-end solutions to provide users with a complete experience. Our e-business solutions are built on industry standard platforms such as Microsoft .NET (MSSQL, C#, VB.NET) and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). We have years of experience with complex compatibility issues including legacy system, back-end, and middleware integration.

Our comprehensive e-commerce applications allow clients maximum flexibility to evolve their e-business systems with minimal technology constraints. Our robust Content Management Systems (CMS) gives our clients the ability to update their own site with new content, products and services. We provide continued web assistance to our clients after the project has been implemented through web maintenance packages such as enhancing existing applications, search engine optimization, regularly measuring and analyzing the web statistics and analytics, bug fixing and constant technical support.

Online Search Engine Optimization and Marketing [open]

Cardiff Creative offers a full suite of search engine optimization and online marketing services. Through our tried and true methodologies we provide customized solutions for search engine optimization and online marketing to help clients achieve higher rankings in search results. Our process consistently results in increased visibility, sales and online ROI for our clients.

Our SEO services include:

  • Search Engine friendly web site design and file architecture
  • XML Sitemaps
  • Friendly URL's
  • Standardized use of HTML tags and attributes
  • Competitive keyword analysis
  • Copy writing website optimization
  • Manual search directory & search engine submissions
  • Link building campaigns
  • Pay per click campaign management
  • Search engine positioning maintenance
  • On-going placement reporting and ROI analysis

Web Site Analytics [open]

We have long been using sophisticated web analytics tools to help our clients understand their customers and their patterns better. Collecting this weblog and link analysis data, Cardiff Creative is able to organize, analyze and report this information and guide our clients into making educated decisions on critical paths of their website for maximum conversions, website effectiveness and more importantly ROI.

We are experts in an array of website analytics tools including:

  • Google Analytics - Urchin
  • Webtrends
  • Omniture
  • CoreMetrics
  • HitBox

Technologies We Use [open]

  • Database Design and Development: Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Access, PostgreSQL
  • .NET (C#, VB.NET, AJAX.NET)
  • Java/J2EE
  • N-tier Architecture
  • AJAX frameworks (JQuery, ProtoType, Dojo, Script.aculo.us etc.)
  • Visual Basic 6.0
  • Active Server Pages 3.0
  • Cold Fusion MX
  • PHP
  • JavaScript and AJAX
  • XML, SOAP and custom web services
  • XHTML/DHTML
  • CSS
  • Flash Actionscript

Our Partnerships [open]

Rackspace Hosting Partner Kentico Development Partner