Engineering vs. Design

There are really two types of website "design" firms that you can hire. Many firms specialize in a design, creating a concept from an idea, a product or your business model and demand creative control and license. Other firms rely on you for the concepts, ideas and creative - concentrating on gathering input from you, including your layouts, graphics and content and then putting that together. What differentiates these types of firms may not be quality of the final design, but how well the site fits into your existing marketing efforts, how many "bells and whistles" are included and the visual inpact of the site (and often the price).

Web Engineering

At Rank1st we characterize ourselves as a web engineering firm, we are not Fifth Avenue marketing concept experts. We will take your design, layout and existing marketing materials creating a quality website for you. We are programmers, we know how html, php, cgi and asp work and we can construct a quality website that fits your business and accomplishes your business goals. If you are interested in a true design firm, concept marketing material, logo development and the like we would be happy to refer you to other firms that we judge to be the "best of the best" in this respect.

The Engineering Edge

Since we are technology engineers, we can also provide webmaster services for your website including script installation, website migration - that is moving from one hosting company to another, e-mail setup and web hosting management. Our experience with search engine optimization also gives us an edge in designing new sites or maintaining existing ones. We provide new website design, website maintenance including web page updates and website expansion.

Project Engineering and Project Management

In working with other web designers and engineers, and for that matter technology professionals in general we have found that the biggest headache in almost any technology project is managing the project. We work with web designers all of the time that are waiting for customer approval, customers to gather input or graphics, etc. In many of these cases nobody is truely managing the project - customer or designer. We pride ourselves on making sure the project gets done and provide project management services as part of our development services. Many firms rely on us to help or assist in those project management tasks even if we are not the actual "designer" of the site.