Overview

Many companies need more than just a good web design; they need pages that can dynamically engage with potential customers and clients. This may be in the form of an online shop, surveys for marketing feedback, or specific bespoke solutions.

Unlike many companies who focus either on design work, or programming, we can provide the complete package for you. By consolidating the communication here, it can rapidly cut down project costs in terms on money, and time.

Because every company is different, it is not uncommon for us to regularly work tightly with our clients through business meetings, and online communication in order to make sure our work is tailored perfectly for your requirements.

Click continue below to see read more information about the services we provide, or click on the side list to see information on specific services we provide.

Rails Development

'Rails' has created a massive stir in the web development community. In recent months there has been huge amount of attention given to this new technology that allows developers to create advanced websites with rich user interfaces much quicker than rival technologies such as PHP, Java, or ASP.NET.

Virtual Function are UK leaders in Rails web development, and the advantages of Rails technology can clearly been seen by end-users in our flagship product, 'LetsMove.In' which boasts a rich, powerful, yet simple user interface.

The increased productivity gains from 'Ruby on Rails' technology translate to development cost savings, both in terms of time and money!

E-Commerce Solutions

One of the beauties of the internet is the ability to do online shopping from just about anything from almost anywhere! The ability to market products to a global audience is something that many companies depend on now. Not only is it practical for your clients to be able to shop online, but it is highly cost effective. Unlike a conventional shop, there is not the overhead of renting premises, or having to employ staff at checkouts. And, unlike a normal shop, your online store is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year.

We can help deploy an online shop where you can manage your own product database as you wish. We can oversee the process of creating an ordering system that integrates with popular payment gateways such as Paypal, and Worldpay so that users can pay for goods with ease.

Content Management Systems

Nothing is more frustrating to clients when they find outdated content on your website. Many potential clients are impatient, and will simply give up, and probably seek the information from a rival companies website. What a company needs is a system where they can modify the content on their web site.

Content management systems allow ordinary members of staff in your company make updates to the content of your web site. This reduces the time it takes to publish content and greatly simplifies the process to keeping your website up to date. Workflow and versioning systems can be put into place to aid publishing in larger companies. This enables changes to content to be tracked, and enables some form of moderation to take place, so that new content can be reviewed for errors before publishing. On top of this, a permissions system can be put in place for big companies so that different departments only have access to edit specific parts of the site.

Training will be provided as part of the package should you require a content management system. There is a relatively low learning curve and anyone who is reasonably skilled with word processor packages will have little trouble understanding how to use a content management system.

Bespoke Web Site Development

Every business is different, without this, companies would not have a competitive edge. We don't believe that a 'one-size-fits-all' solution will always fit you. Bespoke web development is our speciality. By creating a unique web based software solution tailored to fit your requirements, we believe you can make the most of your web presence.

Virtual Function operates closely with clients on bespoke websites. A website should be more than an online presence; it should be a business tool that plays a key role in the operation of your company. Therefore we believe a website should integrate into your business, rather than trying to work your business round existing tools that do not match your requirements.

Before starting any bespoke work, we spend time with you as a client researching your requirements. Our experience in software engineering means that we understand how important it is to build up a strict specification.

We split up bespoke projects into a number of 'iterations' once a specification has been agreed. By breaking projects down into short iterations, we can focus on developing websites in stages. While the site is being developed, we prove clients with access to the work in progress, along with a shared project management system so they can monitor progress and give us continuous feedback.

Search Engine Optimisation

A web site could be the best looking, and most user friendly web site in the world. However, if no body knows it's there then it doesn't serve any purpose.

Search engines have been proven to be the biggest source of traffic for nearly all of the sites on the internet. Therfore optimising your site for search engine coverage is a very economical form of marketing.

When we develop websites, we will take measures to make sure that your site is not only user friendly, but search engine friendly as well. Search engines have developed rapidly in the last few years in order to adapt and provide more accurate results. No longer are the days where you could the age-old trick of simply smacking together a load of embedded keywords as 'META' tags into a site. Search engine optimisation is now a big business. As a result companies can quite often rather deceptive using statistics to try and prove to you that they can give you the best search engine ranking possible. In reality, few companies make realistic claims that give you truly signifgant return for your investment unless they are using techniques that are banned from the search engines (i.e. cheating).

Search engine optimisation is about optimising your site so that search engines give you high rankings for keywords that are specific to the market your business wants to target. The choice of keywords is critical in order to maximise your coverage in the search engine.

What we do:

• Research with you what keywords will promote your site targeted traffic
• Submission to major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN.
• Submission into major search engine directory services such through the DOMZ
• Online statistics where you can see what searches are bringing your site traffic
• Site wide analysis and optimisation of content

Content Integration & Data Feeds

Freedom to communicate efficiently is what drives the internet. It is becoming more and more important in today's service driven internet to be able to integrate data from difference data sources, such as other web sites, and 3rd party software. A typical example of this is being able to integrate with another site that provides currency exchange rate information in real-time to be able allow potential customers view items on your e-commerce site in their native currency.

We can provide bespoke solutions involving XML and web services, allowing you to integrate several XML aware programs so they can work together for your company.

Data Mining

Customer feedback in an integral part of any successful business. Data mining is the process of capturing user feed back through forms and surveys online for statistical analysis. We can provide tailored solutions so that you can capture user input from your website and manipulate the feedback in statistical reports according to your needs.

Web Hosting & Email

Once a site has been created, it needs a place to live. This is the equivalent to renting a house for your website. Unlike many companies that use generic hosting packages, we pride ourselves in being able to tailor a hosting plan that will fit the requirements of your business. This means that we can give you, the client more control over your website. Typically, will mean you will have a control panel where you have the freedom to view site statistics, and manage your email accounts.