Does your business need a website or custom software?

A business website helps people discover your organisation and make contact. Custom software helps people carry out a specific workflow. Some projects need both, but it is useful to define their jobs separately.

Choose a website for discovery and enquiries

If visitors mainly need to understand your services, read useful information and contact you, start with a focused website. Clear copy, useful pages, mobile usability and working contact details matter more than a long feature list.

Choose an application for repeatable operations

If staff need to manage stock, assign work, track records or generate reports, describe that process as an application workflow. Identify who can view or change each type of record and what should happen when information is incomplete.

Check what can be reused

Existing publishing, accounting, customer management or booking tools may already meet part of the requirement. Review their capabilities before commissioning a new system. Integrations may be more practical than replacing everything.

Plan a small first release

Start with the most important user journey. For a website, that might be discovering a service and sending an enquiry. For an application, it might be recording a request and assigning it to a staff member. Add later features when the first workflow is useful.

Questions to answer before a quote

• Who will use the system?
• What records and actions do they need?
• Which existing tools must remain connected?
• What happens when a task fails or needs correction?
• Who will support the system after launch?

Read about our custom software work and web development services, or tell us what your business needs.