Our Website Approach

Northern Village can help you to develop a website that's affordable, effective, useful, modern, and powerful. How do we do it?

We use a content-driven philosophy in producing easy to edit, custom-designed websites. It is a fast and efficient approach that highlights your core message and allows for flexible site development, fast delivery and easy maintenance. This means you will be on message with a design and implementation that supports the goals of the website.

The most important part to us is that you remain in full control of your website process. We are happy to take your project from inception through to completion with our resources. We are just as happy to use a village approach that blend your resources with the resources you need from us to maximize the effectiveness of our combined skills.

Content driven website

Our content-driven process is easy to follow:

Step 1: Thoroughly plan your website and set realistic goals
Step 2: Create your targeted content
Step 3: Reinforce your message with a custom design that reflects your purpose and goals
Step 4: Implement the website in our easily updated platform that adheres to industry standards

Step 1: Plan your website

Planning is the first, and most important, step in developing a website. The more you plan, the more effective and powerful your web presence will be.

It's important to thoroughly understand what you are setting out to accomplish. It's equally essential to know what's out there already, and how you can distinguish yourself.

Once you have a clear vision and attainable goals, start easily editing your website and put your plan into motion.

Step 2: Create your targeted content

Northern Village will collaborate with you in developing and organizing content. We will create the website structure based on your plan and goals; add the content (including text, images, movies, music, and other files); and then show you how to easily update the website yourself.

Writing and Editing If you have an existing website, you can move content over to your new website and still have the option to make changes that revitalize the old content (of course, we can help you with the move).

If necessary, we can write and/or edit, create illustrations and locate images, or generate higher-end content such as movies, flash animations, and audio files.

At this stage of development, you can take time to review what you have done so far, and make sure that you deal with any weaknesses that become apparent before design elements are applied that may camouflage these fundamentals. Once you are happy with the content you have generated for the prototype, and once the organization of the site makes sense, you can carefully consider the “face” that you will show online, and select the design.

Content creation is generally a collaborative effort between Northern Village and the website client. In general, Northern Village will:

Create the website structure based on your planning
Add existing content, including text, images, movies, music, files, etc.
Show you how to easily update the website yourself

In addition, Northern Village can:

Write and/or edit copy
Create or locate photographs and/or illustrations for site
Develop higher-end content such as movies, flash animations and music

Once a representative amount of content has been placed in the prototype, and the organization of the site has been firmed up, it is time to start the design.

Step 3: Reinforce content with a tailored, custom design

Northern Village believes that the best websites are ones that have a custom design that is tailored to the message that you want to communicate.

A custom design approach in conjunction with a content driven approach will get you to the message that you want, while keeping costs down. The approach is to focus on the content first, so that the message you are communicating is coming through on the website before you attempt a design. Showing working content to a designer makes their job easier, as they know not only the main message, but also many of the nuances that can add a lot of value to the design.

Working through content first provides more time for a you to really think about the image it wants to convey through words and visuals. Solid content can often give birth to various design ideas, or draw attention to particular elements that can be targeted by a good design. We therefore recommend that a design be created after a good amount of the content has been entered into the prototype.

The layout for each device is considered. For larger monitors, the experience can be richer because of the added screen space, while with smaller devices, the desire is usually to get straight to the content, which works very well with our content-driven philosophy.

Northern Village works with a number of talented designers who can bring your website to life. Or, if you have a preferred designer in mind, we are happy to work with them as part of our village approach.

Step 4: We implement mobile friendly websites that adheres to industry standards

Our back end technology allows you to have virtually any design you want along with website content that can always be easily updated without compromising the integrity of your design.

Responsive Design Many websites are viewed most frequently on mobile devices. Does your website function as well on mobile devices as it does on computer screens? If not, you may want to consider building a responsive website.

Google always changes the algorithm that will affect how search results appear. One of these changes is that search results will prioritize websites that the search engine deems "mobile-friendly" – ones that feature larger text, easy-to-click links and a “responsive design.”

Northern Village uses a responsive design technique to deliver an optimal viewing experience for visitors to your website, whether they are using a smart phone, a tablet, a laptop, or a widescreen monitor. It also means that each time you easily update your website, the changes are reflected on all devices.