There’s a bit of irony in building a website for a company that has spent nearly three decades building websites, software, and custom solutions for other organizations.
With that level of experience and technical expertise, it seemed at first like our website would come together almost organically, as if we could snap our fingers, do what we do every day, and it would be done in no time flat.
The problem was, we actually weren’t doing what we do every day. We assumed that because we were technical experts that our own site would be the easiest of our careers. After all, we know who we are, what we excel at, and why someone should work with us.
The thing that we didn’t consider was that those two components (a technically proficient partner and an organization with a sound sense of identity) are a part of almost every web project, successful or not. We weren’t at an advantage just because we happened to occupy both seats.
As a result, we found ourselves faced with the exact same problems that our clients come to us with that the very beginning of the process:
“We know what we want to communicate, but how do we express it clearly, especially to multiple audiences?”
“I don’t know how to describe what I like visually, but I’ll know it when I see it.”
“We have so much to say, but how do we organize it?”
“How will we ever get all the content we want on the site together in time to launch?”
…and eventually…
“Why can’t we get the same results for ourselves that we can for our clients?”
In retrospect, the answer was obvious: we didn’t get the same results because we didn’t follow the same process. One of the differentiators in working with LANEX is the emphasis our process puts on ensuring that the right questions are asked up front and that there is a clear answer to each one, before we think about touching a keyboard.
It’s why we find success whether we’re designing a website or building a complex, scalable software solution: we identify and define the vision of success together with our clients first.
As soon as we followed our own process, we were able to see with clarity the shared vision we were after.
1. Defining the Vision
Every successful project starts with a clear objective.
That sounds obvious, but even with your organization’s decision makers it’s easy to jump straight into layouts, colors, and features before answering a more fundamental question: What should this website accomplish?
In our case, we realized that our website had to communicate several things to visitors – the breadth and depth of our technical experience, the ways we engage with our clients, and most importantly, the emphasis we have on designing a system that honors your constraints.
That means that the content had to be written so that a C-level executive can understand our commitment to risk mitigation, an MSP can find details about the tech stacks we have experience in, and an entrepreneur can learn about our engineering roadmapping that leads to success even if there are pivots.
Outlining these profiles helped us to think more clearly about how we could structure content. With our audiences clearly defined, we set out to figure out how to communicate our experience to them.
2. Organizing Nearly 30 Years of Experience
We had another unique problem in presenting LANEX. After nearly 30 years of custom software development, we’ve worked with a wide range of industries, technologies, platforms, and business problems. The challenge wasn’t a lack of experience; it was presenting that experience without overwhelming visitors or unintentionally suggesting that certain capabilities were more important than others.
Not only that, but we work with customers at all levels of technical expertise. Sometimes selecting the right technology stack is vitally important for compliance or risk mitigation, or because of the specific constraints of a given project. Other times, it’s a secondary decision.
Our website needed to reflect the breadth of our technical experience, but even more important were the services we offer that bring to bear that expertise through processes we’ve developed over time.
Ultimately, we chose a clean, but well-connected map of both of these concepts. Our services come first, as these are the frameworks for driving results in your business. If the user is interested in our experience in a particular technology, they can engage with our site through that lens as well.
Once we had our navigational structure defined, we had a clear map for writing the content. It wasn’t long before we ran into the next major challenge – getting content together that concisely describes nearly 30 years of experience.
3. Creating the Content
Anyone who has worked on a web project will tell you that retrieving the content is the longest part of the process. Experiencing that process firsthand gave us an even greater appreciation for the balancing act our clients face every day.
Some content is straightforward to assemble. Our web team has produced years of design and development work that we’re proud to showcase. Other projects are far more difficult to feature because they involve proprietary systems, internal business processes, or software that simply isn’t public-facing.
At the end of the day, it’s not easy to capture 30 years of experience in a portfolio section from a sheer volume perspective, especially while we’re focused on building solutions for our customers. Waiting until every case study is represented or every word of copy is perfect can delay a launch indefinitely.
Instead, we launched with a solid foundation, and continue to refine, expand, and add content. We build websites around flexible content management systems that make future updates straightforward for exactly this reason. A website should grow alongside your organization, not become another project that’s perpetually “almost ready.”
Looking Ahead
If there’s one thing this project reminded us, it’s that technical expertise doesn’t automatically make a project successful. Especially as new innovations make time to delivery more efficient than ever, the most impactful work comes from understanding your business, having strong engineering chops, and working together to establish a vision and a plan to realize that vision.
We hope that you’ll re-visit our website as we continue to expand our portfolio with new and archival projects. If there’s a software-related need you don’t see on our site, reach out and ask us about it. Chances are, we’ve seen it before.
