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GEN build business websites that do more than carry information. A website can let your customers search your stock, order and track deliveries, pay invoices, raise problems and manage their own accounts, all connected to the systems you already run, so the work that used to arrive by telephone and email happens on the site instead.
We have built for the web since its first days, when server-side code was written in C. The tools have changed completely since then, but the approach has not: plan it properly, build it with you watching, and support it for as long as you use it.
Most business websites are static. They describe the products and services, carry an about page, a contact form and perhaps a blog, and leave everything else to the telephone. Customers now expect to do far more themselves: update their details, check an order, make a payment, report a problem or arrange a refund, whenever it suits them. A business that makes those things easy keeps its customers, and one that does not is quietly losing them to a competitor that does.
Consider two suppliers of bottled water. The first keeps calling, pushes deliveries you do not need and turns up unannounced. The second lets you book a delivery online, report your usage and see your bills, and never chases you. Loyalty to the first does not survive the discovery of the second. Customers should still be able to call and ask questions, but self-service takes a large share of that work away, saving time and money on both sides.
Our own site is the working example. Everything listed alongside is live here, built by the same team that would build yours.
Written for the job and run on bare metal for the best performance. The right choice when the site has to do a great deal, and do it fast.
WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, so your own staff can update the pages without a developer, at some cost in performance and flexibility.
Sites built as an information resource, on platforms such as DokuWiki, for product documentation, internal knowledge or a public reference.
Password protected areas where customers see their orders, invoices and services, and manage their own accounts.
We can take the site you already have, on WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or anything else, and add ordering, payments, calculators, logins and chat, without starting again.
Stock, sales, accounts and CRM systems linked to the site, so what customers see is live. Our integration work covers the systems behind it.
A customer told that their order is delayed is far less likely to complain than one whose delivery simply does not arrive. Keeping people informed at each step reduces calls to customer service and reduces complaints, and it costs almost nothing once the site is connected to the systems that know what is happening.
An order confirmation is a start. Every notification after it should also give the customer an easy way to change something or report a problem, so that the next contact happens on the site rather than on the telephone. The largest online retailers keep their customer service costs down this way: there is very little you cannot do for yourself on their websites.
The stage where most projects fail. We work with you on every page and function, using mock-ups, artwork and flowcharts, until each page is clearly specified in content, layout and function.
Once the specification is agreed, our developers build it, and in most cases you can see the pages as they take shape and tell us what you think while it is still easy to change.
When you have signed off the design, we move the site to your existing or new domain, with redirects so that your busiest old pages land on the right new ones.
A maintenance period is included on all but the smallest sites. After that, a fixed annual cost or pay as you go, whichever you prefer.
Do not be sold the idea that AI will transform your sales. On a website it is useful in a small number of cases, and it is hard to get right. The failures are public: a courier's chatbot that openly agreed it was the worst delivery company, and an airline held by a tribunal to a refund policy its chatbot had made up. Both were the result of systems that were never properly constrained.
Used carefully, it earns its place. We recently built an AI-assisted customer service system in which callers describe their problem, a model works out the most likely answer, and the caller goes straight to the right team, removing a whole triage step for the client. Our chatbot and language model pages explain where we think it helps, and we will tell you plainly when it will not.
GEN Software Systems and Development, at www.gensoftware.dev, is our team of software architects, developers and engineers. They work from a development staging platform with test environments, data collection and bug tracking, on frameworks in PHP, Bash, Node.js and C that we have built and maintained over many years. Those frameworks are much of why our delivery is quick, reliable and predictable.
GENSoftware works on a "we build it, we own it" basis. We still support code we first wrote 25 years ago, and we will not turn you away: if we wrote it, we will support it.
It depends on who will change it and how much it has to do. A CMS such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal lets your own staff update pages without a developer, at some cost in performance and flexibility. A custom build is faster and does exactly what you need, but content changes come back to us. Many of the sites we build use a CMS for the pages and custom code for everything that talks to your own systems, and we will tell you which suits you before you commit.
Yes, and it is much of what we do. Whether the site runs on WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or something else, we can add customer logins, stock search, ordering, payments, calculators, notifications and live chat, connected to the systems you already use, without replacing the site itself.
Usually, yes. We have connected websites to in-house stock control, sales order systems and QuickBooks, so customers see live stock, orders go straight into the sales system and invoices come from the accounts package. Where a system has no usable API, we can often build one.
Before the switch we identify the pages that bring in most of your visitors, and put redirects in place so that each of them lands on the most relevant page of the new site. Anyone following an old link, whether a customer or a search engine, still arrives somewhere useful rather than at an error page.
Except on very small sites, a period of maintenance is included, usually between a few months and a year, for the small changes that come from real use. After that you can take maintenance at a fixed annual cost or pay for changes as you need them. We do not insist on either.
Only if it solves a real problem, and only if it is built so that it cannot promise things you would not. A courier's chatbot has openly agreed it was the worst delivery company, and an airline has been held to a refund policy its chatbot invented. We use AI where it clearly helps, such as working out what a customer needs and sending them to the right team, and we will tell you plainly when it will not.
Whether you need a new site, or more from the one you have, the first conversation is about what the website should do for your customers and your staff, not what it should look like. Tell us what they call you about most, and we will tell you how much of it the site could handle.
If you would rather fix the scope and cost before committing, our consultancy can turn the idea into a specification first. Hosting for the finished site is covered under website hosting.