Web Development Services

Culture Cube builds custom-coded e-commerce platforms, interactive experiential installations, and complex database systems.

Call us if you need:

A database upgrade
E-commerce functionality on your site
Interactive forms
A dynamic directory
An app

…or any other development project typically provided only by a large agency. We’re a small marketing company offering the skills and experience of a much bigger firm.

Our services are affordable, and with us, every client gets access to the best talent, not interns or overseas contract workers.

Web Design vs. Web Development

Web design and web development are distinct activities requiring different skill sets.

Designers make a website visually pleasing, easy to read, and intuitive to use. They concern themselves with colors, imagery, layouts, navigation, and even spacing between lines of text.

A web developer takes the design of a graphic artist and translates it into code and other elements comprising a web page that works equally well on mobile and desktop devices. The developer builds dynamic functionality like e-commerce and database-driven directories.

At most agencies, designers don’t code, and developers don’t design.

Web Development’s Impact on a Site

Users always notice the design of a site and seldom consider the development. But if a page is slow to load, it could be due to bloated code.

If a page crashes, there’s a conflict somewhere in the code.

If a page displays poorly, it hasn’t been coded right.

If checkout goes smoothly, you can thank a developer for collaborating with a designer and UX specialist to create a seamless process.

Web development is the engine powering the site.

Front-End Web Development vs. Back-End

Front-end development deals with the display of a page, in contrast to back-end development, which is behind the scenes and far more complex, sometimes involving massive databases.

At Culture Cube, we leave front-end development in the hands of bona fide developers and SEO experts, ensuring clean, fast pages that perform well with search engines.

Back-end development is handled entirely by skilled coders proficient in Java, JavaScript, PHP, C#, etc.

We’ve created back-end functionality for:

Interactive installations
E-commerce platforms
Subscription signup & management
Newspaper directories
& more

Back-End Development Powers the WebSite

Back-end developers are the unsung heroes of software development. While front-end developers focus on the user interface and experience, back-end developers make an application or website work.

They write the APIs and routing that allow data to flow between a site’s front and back end. They manage data storage and ensure efficient access to data.

Some of our client sites have robust database functionality and APIs for product feeds, requiring the custom code of a back-end developer.

Do You Need a Developer? What We Can Do for You

We develop everything from small marketing websites to e-commerce systems with thousands of products.

Culture Cube projects have included:

Custom e-commerce for a large retailer with a local market.
Database-driven directories for a newspaper.
Interactive experiential marketing installations.
Small business websites linked to online schedulers.
Multi-page forms for payment and information gathering.

Let us know what you need, and we’ll give you an honest assessment of the potential cost.

Our Approach to Web Design & Development

At Culture Cube, graphic designers, UX designers, SEO specialists, and developers collaborate to create a site that’s technically correct, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to navigate and understand.

First, we look at the data to determine what works for your business and what doesn’t.

We consider your business goals.

Who’s your target audience? Do you lack online search visibility? Would you benefit from an online scheduler? Complex forms? E-commerce? Our preliminary conversations will inform the site build.

We won’t try to sell you on features and functionality unless they help you meet your business goals.

We evaluate your site.

We place tracking on your site to understand what customers are doing on your most important pages and identify where you could be losing business.

We look at traffic trends, page load speed, search performance, and content quality on your site. And that’s just for starters.

We do keyword research.

Keywords, or the terms that searchers frequently use, help us identify content areas to develop, site architecture (how a site is organized), and even global navigation.

Before we turn a project over to the designers, we’ve created detailed sitemaps, sometimes reaching down to several levels. We’ll share these with you upon request.

We consider UX.

“UX” represents the user experience, encompassing everything from your site’s navigation to page load speed. Before our designers create a mockup of your home page, we’ll review navigation, color psychology, calls to action, and more.

Click paths will be clear. Navigation will be intuitive. Calls to action will be well-placed and frequent.

Page load considerations guide our graphic treatment of a page and even the plug-ins and fonts we choose. Nothing is left to chance if we can help it.

We design collaboratively.

Meetings early in the design process help us decide what to feature on your site and how to build it. Everyone has a say. Still, final decisions rest in the hands of the people best qualified to do the work.

Design decisions will always reflect what’s best for your business and not for our comfort, convenience, and even bottom line.

We test thoroughly.

Before and after site launch, we run site crawls to detect errors and missing redirects, test browser compatibility and mobile display, and tweak site and server settings for faster page loading.

Custom Apps & Dynamic Websites

We can create custom websites and web-based apps from the ground up if needed.

A custom website may not make sense for your business, but what about an app for your newspaper? Or an e-commerce platform where current options are inadequate, and enterprise e-commerce has an entrance fee many times larger than your annual marketing budget?

We’ve built:

Custom e-commerce platforms
Web-based games, like trivia and matching games
Custom integrations
WordPress plug-ins

Call us to see if we’re a fit for the project you can’t get done elsewhere for an affordable price.