One Size Does Not Fit All
When you purchase a new car, with the exception of the color and available options, you get something almost identical to the one in the showroom. Effective websites should never be like that; a "one-size fits all approach" in websites usually means that it won't really serve any of your needs. Your brand, your logo and graphic elements, photography, videos and content along with the unique needs and preferences of your customers should shape the way your website works and feels. So while we benefit from the use of large scale open source software, what a customer finds on your website should be unique to your business. Their web experience is often the first impression of your company, and for most businesses, you need that impression to lead to customer action that results in an appointment, sale or visit.
Agile approaches have changed web development dramatically.
1. Responsive: Effective websites have to be tested and improved on all kinds of devices --mobile and desktop. We continue to use feedback from your customers to improve access to your website.
2. Home-Pages: Every page on your website is a "home-page" and needs to be tailored to address a specific purpose for your audience. An agile approach allows this kind of development to touch each page, and for ongoing updates to fine tune the customer experience.
3. Data-Driven: Digital and user reporting allows us to see exactly how people behave on your website, what they like and appreciate and what we need to adjust or move.
4. Fresh Content: Your website should never become static if you want customers to return. A rhythm of fresh content improves search engine ranking and customer loyalty.
Agile Development
Creating a custom web-experience that best expresses your needs as a business requires give and take with both you and your customers, and the technology process that can best produce this outcome is called Agile Development. Agile Development and the "Scrum" process in which Story Collaborative is certified, allow for a website to be developed and delivered in phases, and improved over time. Scrum is a term from rugby which refers to how a whole team moves the ball down the field together.
- Agile web-development means that we deliver your website in phases, and that the continuous unveiling of new customer experiences and pages creates better performance and attracts more people to your website than a "finish it all and leave it," static approach.
- The agile approach allows us to test and continue to improve the way that your website interacts and serves your customers. We use data to adjust what and how information is presented.
- Agile development means that the first publication of your website comes more quickly.
- Agile development means that our team, and yours, listen intentionally to customers and adjust to their needs.
- Agile development with Story Collaborative means that we can bring together different media, technology and methods of communication using the diverse expertise of multiple area experts.
We'll Get There, One Step at a Time
The first phase of your website, which is built after we understand your business goals and brand story, will include a Home Page (the traditional one), About Page, Contact Page and Essential Services Page. The unveiling of additional pages, and publication of the new site will occur in a schedule that we agree upon together, and we'll celebrate the new customer experiences that those pages provide to build maximum viewership and interaction along the way.
Why should a business, especially one that is committed to staying on the cutting edge, use an old fashioned approach to developing a website? Agile Development is the approach that effective companies use to get things done.
All Story Collaborative Principals are Scrum Master Certified. 
