We Built The Web
Well… sort of… our beginnings go way back to 1994, the year the internet became public. As web trailblazers, we introduced some of the first ever database-driven websites and online shopping cart solutions on the planet. To accomplish our design goals – being as development platforms for the web didn’t yet exist – we deployed our own API called “ActiveCGI,” a precursor to PHP and Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP). In 1996 we completed the first ever international credit card transaction between an online store and a shopper by partnering with the first ever payment system, CyberCash. We won numerous awards including top accolades from E-Commerce Guide, Ziff-Davis, and many others, and we developed hundreds of websites for every type of business from European fashion boutiques to the United Nations in UAE. Today we focus on WordPress solutions including e-commerce-enabled themes and plugins.
Web Standards
ECware has always adhered strongly to W3C’s web standards as a way of ensuring that the websites we design are easy to maintain, accessible, fast, and search engine friendly. For these reasons and others, we were early adopters of WordPress as a content management service (CMS) rather than simply a blog. Here are some of the advantages to designing web solutions using WordPress, a W3C-compliant framework for building and maintaining websites:
- Rapid Development: Deploying a web site using WordPress requires far less time than to build a site from scratch. Being as WordPress already includes what you would normally build as a standard set of features, it makes much more sense to embrace and extend what WordPress has to offer and focus more time and effort on content, presentation, and extended functionality.
- Responsiveness: We ensure your website will be just as usable with iPhones, Android mobile phones, iPads, and other tablets as they are with web browsers on personal computers.
- Efficiency: We separate the business logic, content, and styling. This results in a more compact design with faster load times and an improved consumer experience.
- Search Engine Optimization: We structure content in such a way as to make it much easier for search engines to read your website. This translates into higher rankings, more traffic, and more customers.
- Maintenance: Maintenance is simple and intuitive using WordPress. Sites that don’t include the level of CMS capabilities of WordPress tend to be more difficult to update and this translates into higher maintenance costs and unnecessary ongoing reliance on web developers.
- Open Source: WordPress is open to the largest community of third-party developers like us who extend WordPress functionality by building themes and plugins. Also, if you ever want to change hosts or developers, you can take your WordPress site with you.
- Ease of Use: Most developers know how to use WordPress. In fact, your in-house staff can easily learn to use WordPress and make updates on their own.
Intuitive Interface
ECware focuses design efforts around the needs, wants, expectations, and limitations of the end-users of your online presence. Instead of guessing what consumers of your content want – or worse, forcing them to accept a unique process and adjust their own behavior accordingly – we build consumer experiences that match their existing behavior. In geek speak we call this an “intuitive interface.” Taking usability into account from the start saves valuable time, is cost-effective, and will result in a more fluid and successful design (satisfied consumers of your content).
Responsive Design
With so many different devices – computers, phones, tablets, kiosks, embedded technologies – able to access web content, it is unrealistic to expect every visitor to your website to have the same exact experience. But they can have meaningful experiences that give them access to your content in a way that compliments the devices they use. It is important that your site functions well and looks professional to all of your potential customers regardless of how they are accessing your website.