Many web design companies are one-person operations. These companies either specialize in web design (sites that look good) or programming (site functionality and features). A few try to do both; most are unsuccessful. It takes years to develop graphic and/or programming skills and techniques. Some of these companies may do a good job on the surface, but we urge you to look a little deeper. There is a lot more to web design than just the way a site looks.

We are not a one-person shop. What does this mean for you? Well, first a web design is more than just a pretty web page. Creating an effective website is a complex process and requires several skills; no one person can master them all. At CWS we believe everyone has a specialty and that they should focus on these skills.

There are three main parts to effective web design: the look, the code, and the visibility to search engines.

Let face it, in the web world it is love at first sight. If a customer does not find your website appealing, organized, and easy to navigate they will not stick around to get to know it. Additionally, a site must be region appropriate and have a finished look. There are many websites that do not meet these requirements. The look is one of the most important factors in web design (although there are others).

We employ a full time graphic artist to ensure that each of our sites has a unique, professional, and finished look. Our graphic artist received her training from the renowned Art Institute of Chicago, ensuring that your site is designed to perfection.

In addition to our full time staff, we regularly employ the services of select contract artists and photographers to ensure we have the right skill sets to design your site.

Why is the code so important? Would you want to go to a restaurant where the dining room was clean but the kitchen was a mess? Neither would we.

Let's say you want to make a change to your site; the 'cleaner' the code is, the easier and faster it is for the programmer to make those changes. Also, the cleaner the code is, the easier it is for search engines to find your information. What if you needed someone else to add to or change your website? The cleaner the code is, the easier it is for someone new to figure it out, if the need ever arose. Check your site, your designer’s site, or any visually appealing site out there. Go to their web page and either Right Click and click View Source or go into the View menu at the top of your screen and click View Source. The code should have structure and look organized.

Our dedicated programmer eats, sleeps with, and breathes code. Having received his Associate's Degree in Web Analysis/Programming, he is a fully trained programmer who spends many hours a week learning the latest and best web programming techniques.

In addition to our programmer, we employ a database specialist with over 7 years experience in the corporate financial world.  He builds the back end of our dynamic sits and has created the structure for our own content management system.

SEO, Search Engine Optimization is an art form of its own. Both our programmer and our database specialist spend countless hours researching the latest techniques to ensure your website is at the top of the list. Because many companies try to falsely raise their position on search engines, the search engine companies (like Google and Yahoo) must alter and refine their techniques and policies for ranking websites. We constantly make adjustments to our client’s websites to ensure they are at the top of the search engine lists.

The Calm Water Solutions Team has recently launched our own content management System (NWT 2009).

Many web companies use some form of CMS as a back end for dynamic websites. Dynamic websites are sites designed to have their information changed on a regular basis. A CMS is a database system that stores information that can be displayed on a website. This enables quick and easy changes to a website’s content without having to edit the code itself.

Content management systems can also be used to create sites that the clients can edit themselves without having any programming skills or training.

So why did we build our own system? Aren't there systems that are already built available to purchase? The answer is simple: flexibility, reliability, and features. There are several CMS systems available, some of them are good, others are not, but all have limitations. By building our own CMS we were able to build in the features that we knew our clients wanted and needed. With our team’s programming and database experience, we created an efficient system that can be expanded to meet our clients' future needs, hence we are not limited to someone else's vision of what is needed. We can create it as we and our clients need it.

Most of CWS's new sites are built using the NWT 2009 Content Management System. This allows us to build sites with a high level of functionality in a very short period of time at the lowest possible cost.

More importantly it allows our clients to add, update, and delete the information on their website, whenever they want, and all without any programming training. It also allows for a surprising amount of flexibility in the layout of many of the pages on their website. If you can use Microsoft Word^©, you can edit your website.

For those customers who are not comfortable editing their websites, or who simply do not have the time, CWS will be happy to edit your site for a small administrative fee, much below the standard programming rates.