We Build Websites That Get You More Business Online
Updated on 3/7/2023
Your website is a key component of your marketing campaign. In many cases, a potential customer or client may encounter your company for the first time through the internet. This, among many other reasons, is why it’s critical to have a well-designed website.
When Sixth City Marketing redesigns and builds websites, we aren’t just looking to create a well-designed site (in all screen sizes). Our goal is to do this and to get you more business with our approach with “design for conversion.” Contact us using the form on our website or via phone to learn more about how we can help you get more business.
Recent Work
Why Choose Us To Be Your Web Design Company?
We stand out from other web development and design agencies for a number of reasons. Here are a few to keep in mind:
- We’re Focused on Results – Our main goal is to create websites that increase online response through phone calls and form submission
- No Cookie Cutter Designs – With every client, we take the time to work with you step by step to settle on a design you love that matches your brand and will help you reach your goals
- Our Team Is Unlike Any Other – You will gain the expertise from our in-house team of designers, developers, content writers and strategists who will work with you throughout your web design project
- We Do More Than Just Web Design – We provide a variety of digital services and can offer you help in SEO, PPC, social media, consulting, and much more
- Vast Platform Experience – Our team can build websites in a number of content management systems including WordPress. We also have experience managing websites built in Drupal, Shopify, and more
- We Work Anywhere – We are centrally located in with offices in Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, Houston, and Pittsburgh, and can meet with your team in-person no matter where you are located
FAQs That Web Design Companies Usually Get Asked
How long does it take to build the website?
In most cases, it usually takes 12-16 weeks to build a website from start to finish.
Can you help with writing content?
Absolutely, we have a number of different services that we can help you out with including content creation and strategic content creation using SEO.
Do you use templates?
We don’t. We create custom designs for our clients that are focused on improving user experience, growing traffic from search engines and getting more people to contact you. Templates can cut down the cost of building a website, but the cost to maintain them and update them can be more expensive in the long run.
Do you host websites?
We don’t. We’ve found it better to refer our clients to national and more established hosting websites that specialize in the type of website we’re constructing the website in. A favorite of ours is Siteground.com.
How much does it cost?
There seem to be a few different tiers of website design cost. Here are a few:
- 0-$3,500 Range
You’ll typically get this price range from someone on fiverr.com, someone outsourcing stuff offshore, a freelancer, or a college student. The end product is a functioning website but it usually costs a lot in the long run to keep up or maintain for a lot of reasons. Everyone has a budget and we don’t shame anyone investing at this point. The message we have for you at this price range is buyer beware. - $3,500-$8,000 Range
At this level, you’ll typically get a firm that will buy a website template at a website like themeforest.net and customize it for you. You may get some copy writing at this rate, too. Most firms who take this approach are smaller web design firms, firms that outsource the design and development offshore, or freelancers. The end product is usually a functioning website that looks professional. With this type of investment, you’ll want to have the buyer-beware mindset depending upon the firm. The other downside to this option is the site isn’t customized to the point where it takes into account your target audience and is therefore designed to get a better response. This type of option may cause problems in the long run because of the use of templates, too. It’s definitely not as risky as the previous range. - $8,000+ Range
This is the range that we are in. I elaborate on our approach below, but you get a custom-designed site that is built to get more traffic and response.
What Typically Comes With Web Design Services
If you haven’t been through a formal website redesign process, there’s a lot to understand on what to expect. Here are a few things that we typically include as part of our services:
- Initial Discovery and Understanding Phase
We start our process by listening. We start by discussing what the current challenges are with your existing website and what your goals are with the new website. Typical challenges that customers or clients experience with their websites that lead them to redesign their site include:
- Lack of the ability to update their website via a content management system (or area that they can log in and edit and update content through a Microsoft Word like interface)
- Design isn’t mobile friendly
- The site design is outdated (typically people redesign their site every 3-4 years)
- Branding, leadership or ownership has changed
- They’ve merged with another company
- They don’t like their current website editor or content management system
- Their website isn’t SEO friendly
- They aren’t getting sales or leads from their website
We’ll follow up with questions about your target audience, goals and websites that you like. Our goal is to move into the design phase ready to provide photo mock-ups that emulate the site in both desktop and mobile.
- Design Phase
We have two stages to our design process. There’s a wire-framing stage and also a design stage. Here is a little bit more detail on what to expect in each phase:
- Stage 1: Wire-framing
The wire-framing phase is best described as sketching out the layout of key pages of your website. This is done with any color or graphics (Just squares or circles). We’ll typically outline the layout of your homepage, common inner page (like the about us page) and a blog page (if it’s necessary). The exercise is critical to achieving the goals of key pages as you can position objects to be larger to draw the eye.
- Stage 2: Design
Once you (the client) have approved the wire-frames, we’ll move into mocking up the design via Photoshop, Illustrator or a general design program. The product we produce and hand off to the client to review is what the website will look like. We mock it up as a photo because it’s easier to make adjustments to in the photo editing program rather than in html and css. In this phase, we’ll present the designs and walk you through the rational around why we created the site. At this point, we’ll address any questions and concerns that the client has and make adjustments where needed.
- Stage 1: Wire-framing
- Phase 3: Site Map Planning
This is the stage where our team will strategically reshape the structure of your website. We’ll create a hierarchy of the pages that make the most sense to improve the user experience and get people to the area of the website that they are most interested in. We’ll also review your website data and make recommendations in line with how people are navigating your website now. Finally, there’s another level of strategy involved in this step that pulls in principles of SEO. Our final recommendations will include a structure that is conducive as possible to drawing people to your website from search engines.
- Phase 4: Development
This is where our web development team will take your design and integrate it into the website content management software. Our team will work to make the site align with the mock-ups and also populate the website with the content and graphics.
- Phase 4: Testing and Review
We’ll present the website to you (we’ll send you a link to our development server that is hidden from search engines) and walk you through the key areas of the website. Your team will review the site and provide any edits/feedback. We’ll move to the final phase which is the site launch upon your approval.
- Phase 5: Site Launch
Our team will take the appropriate steps to migrate the files from the development website to the live environment. Typically the website files, graphics and database are moved. We’ll run through our website launch checklist which incorporates reviewing key elements to finalize the switch and also preserve any SEO equity that your previous iteration of your website had.
“Sixth City Marketing revamped our website with usable tools to track our sales and identify where our sales were originating from! What a huge piece of information – to know what advertising is actually generating sales! Sixth City Marketing gave us PRICELESS consultation as to where to best spend our money! I cannot say enough how thankful we are as a small business for Sixth City’s input and work on our marketing plan!” – Shaun Kinley, Kinley Studios
A well-designed site is the foundation of your company’s online presence. But when you hire a web design company, you expect them to not only deliver a well-structured site, but also a website that helps their existing marketing efforts to bring in more business.
We understand that, which is why every website design project that we take on strongly focuses on producing leads through our strategic development tactics.
Because we work with our clients on an ongoing basis through continuing online marketing campaigns with SEO or PPC, we’re able to see which types of designs achieve goals.
Websites We Design Are:
- Completely unique and custom designs created to serve a client’s target audience and goals
- Search engine friendly, incorporating advanced SEO knowledge and enhancements
- Conversion friendly with strong calls to action
- Responsive to all devices (desktop, tablet, and mobile)
- Developed to be as user friendly
- Easily usable backend for your staff to update
- Designed to keep user experience top of mind
Become Compatible on All Device Types
The trend during the last few years has been to make your website “mobile friendly.” With this in mind, your company can get so much more out of your website by utilizing key principles of conversion. These design for conversion methods help to generate the most response out of people visiting your website from desktop, mobile and tablet devices.
Sixth City Marketing can work with you to help identify the best custom web designs for your audience on every device.
“I am extremely pleased with Sixth City Marketing, the college’s website traffic has increased substantially along with a significant increase in the quality of our admission leads. Plus, within a short period of time Sixth City’s SEO efforts have catapulted our Google rankings taking us from a buried page to top listings on Google. Sixth City has made a significant difference in the business college’s rankings and admissions.” – Michelle Parrish Manning, Kent State University College of Business Administration
Variety of Industries We Serve
We’d be happy to help various businesses with our web design services, including:
Contact Our Experts Today
Contact Sixth City Marketing today to give your website a new, clean look designed to maximize the potential of every website visit.