“Corporate Zen has been an amazing partner for more than five years. Corporate Zen and their team have always been just a phone call or e-mail away when I need their help, no matter how big or small the task. They also have kept us informed about new technology and services that will ensure that our web site, which attracts millions of visitors each year, is at its best.”
About
Corporate Zen was founded almost two decades ago. Our mission has always been to offer high-quality, cost-effective web development and design services. We take pride in what we do and provide excellent customer service. Many of our clients, VVMF for example, come from the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia), near our office in Arlington, Virginia. However, we have clients from as away as Hawaii. Regardless of our client’s location, we make an effort to connect with them, whether that’s over Zoom, the phone, or an in-person meeting. We find that open and frank discussions at the start of a project and at critical moments throughout, help make sure that everyone gets and stays on the same page.
We welcome all web design & development projects
Over the years, we’ve worked with a wide range of clients, from small businesses to large non-profits to fortune 500 companies. Through our experience, we’ve grown adept at tailoring our process to the client’s needs and budget. Regardless of who we work for, we always do our best to build sites that meets our clients’ needs and budget.
We develop open-source websites to save time & money
Early in the company’s history, we primarily built sites using proprietary platforms, like ColdFusion. Proprietary platforms require payment of a license fee and only a small set of developers working for the company that owns the platform are allowed to access and edit the platform’s core code. These platforms worked well for our clients and were the best options at the time. However, as time went by, WordPress, Drupal, and other open-source platforms began to mature and improve. Open-source platforms provide full access to all their code. With open-source products developers from all over the world contribute to improving the platform, instead of a just a small team of developers at one company, as with proprietary options. Open-source also means that there isn’t a license fee for the core platform. Once these open-source products matured, we recognized their value and began moving away from proprietary platforms to open source ones, like WordPress and Drupal. Today, we continue to focus on open-source platforms because of the benefits and values they offer to our clients.
Often an open-source tool that has already been thoroughly tested and refined will fit a client’s needs and allow for a less-expensive and faster alternative, when compared to developing a custom tool from scratch. So, whenever they fit the needs of the project, we use open-source products. We have experience with many open-source tools, including WordPress and Drupal and are skilled at customizing them to suit the needs of our clients.
How we use open-source tools depends on the needs of the client. Some clients have straightforward sites. In these cases, we make only a few basic modifications to the default features of an open-source platform, like WordPress. With these sites, we focus most of our time on customizing the look and feel of the site because the platform already offers the functionality the client needs. Relying on WordPress’ out-of-the-box features can reduce development hours, while allowing clients to utilize WordPress’ excellent content editing features.
On the other hand, when clients come to us in need of complex or unique features, we change our approach. Although, we still start from an open-source platform, like WordPress, we modify and customize its functionality extensively to meet the needs of our clients. Custom development that involves adding or altering default functionality requires more development time when compared to making changes to a site’s appearance. However, starting from an open-source foundation still greatly reduces hours versus building a site from scratch. While WordPress started as a blogging platform, it’s capable of much more and we’ve used it to build several complex sites. The link below shows some of the WordPress sites we’ve built.
Your website design & development needs all in one place
We offer design, development, hosting, and maintenance services. This means that instead of going to a different provider for each service, our clients get everything they need in one place. Plus, clients that opt to have us host their sites continue to enjoy this structure after launch. If you have multiple providers, it can be challenging to figure out who you need to contact. Maybe you start with your hosting provider, and they tell you it’s an issue for the developers, but then the developers say it’s actually the hosting provider. How do you know who’s right? When you hire us to host and maintain your site, you won’t need worry about issues like this — you can just let us know what the problem is and we’ll do our best to solve it.
We partner with our clients
We view our clients as partners and try to see each project from their perspective. Our goal when developing sites is to create the best site possible, while staying within the budget. Before we start any design or development work, we make sure we understand the project as a whole, delving into our client’s unique needs and goals. Once we know the why behind our client’s proposal, we work to come up with a strategy to best achieve their goals. By spending time planning at the outset and making sure we understand our client’s needs, we often save our clients time and money, while still creating a product tailored to their needs.
If you are interested in learning more about us or have questions, please reach out in the form below.