Figmints a Providence RI Web and App Development Company

Launching a website or app can seem daunting. Figmints develops stable and scalable solutions for all your applications. Contact Us

Building a website is like building a house. There is no one-size fits all solution.

You need a website or an app to help solve your organization’s unique digital challenges. We want to work with you to design and develop a site that is just for you- a digital solution that attracts more viewers and converts them into promoters. We’ve built hundreds of web and mobile applications for companies, governments, and nonprofits.

After building 100s of websites we have fine-tuned our website design and development process. Though each site is unique they all follow our process framework. This ensures your project stays on time and budget. Split into five steps, the framework breaks major initiatives into smaller steps. Our goal is to build a beautiful and functional website for your organization. Our process helps us get there – together.

From front end visual implementation, to the logic of back end development, or even the meticulous testing of browsers and devices, development is where the code hits the road. Form is only as good as its function!

What we do:

1

Discovery & Strategy

2

Sitemapping

3

Information Architecture

4

Wireframing and Prototyping

5

Front and Back-End Development

6

Browser Testing

7

iOS & Android

8

Support & Maintenance

Development

 

  • Skin the front-end designs. This is when our Sketch files come to life (Sketch is our favorite UI design software). We code the front-end of the website to look like your designs on any device.
  • Develop back-end features and set up API integrations.
  • Set up the Content Management System (CMS) so you can easily update content.
  • Test features such as database communications, links, forms, phone numbers.
  • Ensure site is responsive with all browser types, tablets, and mobile devices
  • Run a technical SEO audit. We run an audit of your new site to ensure we have correctly implemented heading tags, meta tags, image alts, etc.

Launch

After adding content to make the site your own, the big day arrives!

  • Set up, secure, and performance tune the production server (encrypted with SSL).
  • Before we launch we test site speed and code integrity. This means minimizing requests, automatically compressing images, and ensuring everything is running smoothly.
  • Migrate site from staging to production server. This is the actual act of “pushing” your website live.
  • We will train your entire team on how to manage and update the website. This training session can also be recorded so you can watch it again or train new members of your organization.
  • Set off fireworks in our parking lot to celebrate your new amazing site.

Conversion Rate Optimization

The work doesn’t stop when your site is launched. Once your new site is live you are going to want more people to visit it. Our digital marketing packages look to increase your customers, leads, and traffic through search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO).

  • Develop a content strategy with your website as the hub
  • Create a social media plan to promote the content
  • On-page and off-page SEO so it is easy for Google to find the content
  • Sitewide A/B testing and CRO (conversion rate optimization)

Our process is built to help take a complex project and distill it to a standardized roadmap. We use Basecamp for project management. Our goal is to keep things as simple as possible for you the client. While ensuring we create a site using the most technically sound technologies and techniques. When clients ask, “What makes you different from other website shops?” we are proud to respond “Our process.”. Tried and true, our process insures that we can deliver a superior product – every time.

Hosting

We recommend you host your site with our managed hosting solution partner WP Engine. Configured specifically for WordPress hosting with us allows you to deploy your site with enterprise level security and service for a fraction of the cost. We serve the site pages over a CDN (content delivery network) that ensures your pages load fast. All with helpful 24/7 service, monitoring, and support.

Growth-Driven Design

You may not have heard of Growth-Driven Design (GDD) before, and that’s perfectly fine. Here at Figmints, we’re big supporters of GDD. The benefits it offers can apply to any company’s website. So what is GDD and how does it differ from traditional web design? Before explaining what GDD is, it’s best to identify how it differs from traditional web design. Traditional web design is performed using a waterfall approach that entails a long initial planning period, followed by site architecture design. Once this is done, everything gets sent over to development and the site is built over a long period of time. But what happens when an update is needed? The entire process starts over again and a whole new site is created. Most websites using this method redesign every 2-3 years and can leave room for many problems along the way. In contrast to this, GDD is a more iterative approach to web design. Rather than planning for bulk updates every few years, those who use a Growth-Driven approach aim to continuously improve their websites. Through iterative updates, a website created with GDD in mind grows with its users. As consumer preferences and interests change over time, so will your website. This is important for a few reasons:

  • Your UI and UX will always be optimized for your website goals (lead generation, purchases, etc.).
  • Data-driven tests will be easier to perform and will provide you with much a deeper pool of information to pull from.
  • Optimizing conversion rates can be done with needlepoint precision, turning more of your traffic into leads.

GDD finds its value in providing your users with a rich resource of relevant content and information to explore. By continually improving and updating, your users will have a more personalized experience over time, and your digital brand will grow more naturally than ever before.

The GDD Process

With your newfound knowledge of how to drastically improve any website, it’s now time to understand what the process of building a website with GDD is

1. Build the Platform Site (about 2-3 Sprints) Your platform site is where it all begins. This site is simple, stripped down, and super easy to put together. The idea behind your platform site is to have a bare bones foundation which you can build upon over time. With this base, you’ll be equipped to visualize your digital identity and its true potential. This is the longest step of the process and, here at Figmints, takes us about 2-3 sprints to complete.

2. Create and Iterate (½ – 1 Sprint per Month) Content Creation Now that you have a platform to build upon, it’s time to start building! This part of the process is where you’ll build all the juicy content for your traffic to find. Blog posts, page updates, photo libraries, and anything else you want your users to find will all be created and edited month over month as your website matures. Conversion Optimization Here, your conversion methods will be tested with extreme efficiency. With GDD, you can consistently run experiments on your site to see what converts best, and what doesn’t. By doing this, your conversion rate can be improved constantly and substantially, allowing your site to transform its quality traffic into leads. Well, that pretty much wraps it up. As you can see, there’s a clear reason why Growth-Driven Design is our design method of choice. If you have any more questions about how it works, feel free to contact us at info@figmints.com and we’ll happily help you out.

Tech Specs

We build our websites using a content management system (CMS). This allows you to easily edit and update your site over time. Most often we use WordPress as the CMS that sites are built on. WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world powering over 26% of the internet. This means that it is easy to support and maintain over time. We use the most current code standards when developing your site. Here are a few of the technologies that we use:

  • WPengine is our website hosting partner. We can get you a deal on enterprise level hosting.
  • WordPress CMS
  • NPM & Webpack for front end development
  • Custom SASS library utilizing Bourbon & Neat

 

Why Rhode Island?

Based in Providence, Rhode Island we came for the food and stayed for the people. The “Creative Capital” has some of the best arts in the Northeast. The location is perfect to serve clients from New York to Boston – but with a more affordable real estate marketing, you will get Madison Avenue quality for a fraction of the price. Rhode Island also boasts some of the most talented digital creators. It’s a hotspot for designers, developers, copywriters, and marketers. We’re proud to call Little Rhody home.

The internet is growing, are you?

It’s time for your organization to step up your digital game.

We’re here to help your new site act as the hub for all online activities. Contact us today to get a quote for a custom designed and developed website.

Learn more