There is much more to an effective web site than how it looks, and there is a whole lot more to using a site as an effective business tool than merely having a simple “web presence,” which is equivalent to electronic “yellow page” ad, which nobody finds or reads.
That said, we provide comprehensive design and development services, including:
- Graphics;
- Content development;
- Photography; and
- Integration with web stores and advanced forms, and payment processors like PayPal.
Our graphic designs are creative, attractive, clean, thoughtful (in how they relate to the organization and its products or servicess), and very easy to navigate. While we hope that you like the looks of our sites, it is important to know that a more apt description of our overall approach is “Grown-up Web Design™.”
For medium and small organizations, our sites provide everything that you do need to: (1) market and (2) run your business or organization more effectively and more efficiently. It’s not about having a web presence. It’s about having a powerful marketing and management tool to generate revenue, maximize profits, and make your business easier to manage. (The last aspect is usually ignored, especially by small businesses.)
Clients benefit from our experience and time invested finding and evaluating the best open-source applications and plugins, like our .mobi template, which provides an optimized cell-phone viewing experiences. Other clients that either operate internationally or attempt to sell to domestic subsidiaries of foreign companies benefit from our translation plugins that permits readers to discover your site in over 40 languages (when they search in their native tongues).
We also share our knowledge of search-engine optimization techniques. For most organizations, it is easier and cheaper to get to the top than you think. The key to high search rankings isn’t technology, it’s empathy and using our built-in feedback loops.
Our state-of-the-art, easily-managed, search-engine-optimized sites provide that feedback so that you (and not just your web visitors) have important information and tools to refine your message and attract your target market.
Our sites are more than just a web presence. As a recent client stated, Spero Consulting provides “what everybody wants” in a web site, and they are attractive, too.
Regardless of the size of your firm, its site should be:
- Easy for a non-technical person to self-manage. That’s the state-of-the-art, now, in 2010.
- Search-engined optimized;
- Informative about visitors: who are they, how they came to your site, and what they saw.
- Attractive, organized and focused; so many others are cluttered messes.
Easily-managed:
A non-technical person can easily maintain and manage their own site while still operating their business, or they can delegate those tasks to a (non-technical) subordinate or outsource them to us. No knowledge of coding or computer languages is needed to update pages, post announcements, alter the site’s menu structure, or operate an on-line store.
We tell new clients with existing sites that: first they will be amazed at the ease-of-use and then they’ll be annoyed (at both (1) what and who they have suffered with in the past, whether that involves external web designers or internal IT employees, and (2) the opportunities they have missed.) In fact, our web applications are so easy-to-use, they form the backbone of web-based management information systems.
Search-engine optimized:
Our sites automatically contact the large search engines whenever new content is published. It happens so quickly that there are options to delay the contact to allow for corrections of typos, etc. In addition, every day our sites automatically organize their own content in the search-engine’s preferred way. (On a typical day, our small site is crawled and indexed over 9,000 by various search engines.)
However, we go beyond technology by explaining how to optimize search-engine results and rankings. By adopting a few good practices, it’s much easier than novices think. Like everything marketing related, empathy and feedback are crucial.
Informative:
Clearly, everyone wants a site that informs visitors of the products and services they provide, but that’s not what we mean here. We mean the ability to see who is visiting your site, the reason for their visit (search query), what they viewed, and how long they stayed–all from within the same control panel used to update and manage the site.
That feedback permits you (1) to re-focus the message to get potential customers to your site (2) identify new market opportunities. When harnessed, that’s the real power of the internet. It’s not just a platform to proclaim your message. With the right type of site, it is an opportunity to see who is listening.
Attractive:
We have a separate site, SperoWebDesign.com, to showcase our web-related offerings and examples. Visit to read about our development and design approach and to see various examples of designs, features, and completed sites. We permit guests, who have received login credentials, to experience a portion of the back-office of that site.
We can point interested parties to client sites, too, but to protect their privacy we keep those links hidden. Here are exceptions: Raspberry Photo, Rampart Hydro, Greve Davis, and Recruit Our High School Athletes. Here are a few sites that we’ve developed and designed pro bono for local organizations: St. Alphonsus Church, St. Alphonsus Athletic Association, and the Oakhaven Subdivision.
Who We Are:
We’re not 22-year-old art students who never managed a business nor are we IT guys enthralled hardware and “computers” nor are we html coders from the last century.
This practice evolved from developing this site for ourselves. We told others what we had, and they wanted the same thing: not just a web presence but a practical way to manage the web and integrate it into their business model. As one of our recent clients confirmed, “it’s what everybody wants” in a web site.
Our web design and development business focuses on medium-sized and small businesses and organizations, primarily in–but not limited to–Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh region, and Wexford, PA, in particular.
However, given that we work on the internet, there really are no geographical limits or any other types of limits to the size of the firm we can service. Our Content Management System (CMS), which makes the sites easy to manage and update, is perfect for large firms, too, especially entrepreneurial divisions of multi-nationals looking to escape their firms’ IT bureacracies.
If you have any questions, please contact us or call us at 724.940.0255 or 412.779.9028. However, if you need further convincing, here is bit more information about our web-related services.
Our constant refrain is there is much more to good web site design than how a site looks. If you don’t think so, then you most definitely need to contact us.
In addition, we offer ancillary services like:
- Overall public relations management.
- Web marketing and ongoing content management services.
- Automated business intelligence campaigns and sites.
- Web site hosting and maintenance services.
