What makes a website a business tool?

A business website earns its budget when it answers the questions buyers ask before they contact you, captures each inquiry with enough context to act on it, and shows which channels bring customers. Design decides whether a buyer trusts you enough to get in touch. But a well-designed site whose contact form drops messages into a shared inbox, with no source and no follow-up, still loses leads.

So our website projects start from the path a visitor takes to become an inquiry, and from what happens to that inquiry in the next ten minutes. A typical setup: a form submission creates a contact and a deal in your CRM with the landing page, campaign and UTM parameters attached, assigns an owner and starts a two-step follow-up.

Do you need a new website or a fix?

Not every underperforming site needs a relaunch. If the site is recent, the content is accurate and the real problem is that leads go missing, fixing forms, tracking and CRM routing takes days. A rebuild makes sense when the structure no longer matches what you sell, when editors can’t change a page without a developer, when a page builder makes the site slow on phones, or when you need languages, portals or data-driven pages the current platform can’t handle. We tell you which case you are in during discovery, before any proposal.

How we design and build it

Content model before visual design. We define page types, fields and relationships first: what a service page, a reference, a location or a product page must contain. Design then works with real copy for the key pages, so layouts hold up when the actual text arrives.

Stack chosen by who edits, and how often. For corporate and marketing sites we usually build with Astro or Next.js and keep content in Git as Markdown or MDX. Pages are pre-rendered, fast and hard to break, and every change has a history. Where several non-technical editors publish every day, WordPress with a short list of maintained plugins can be the better choice, and we are explicit about the updates it needs. Catalogs, comparisons and directories get a structured data layer that generates the pages.

Quality gates instead of launch-day hope. On InboxRatio and PingMyUsers, a production build fails if an internal link breaks, a page’s metadata is invalid or a data file fails its schema, and tests keep every title and description unique. We apply the same approach to client sites, together with Playwright end-to-end tests on the forms and flows that matter and automated accessibility checks against WCAG 2.1 AA.

Search built in. Sitemaps, hreflang, structured data and fast pages ship with the first release. Content strategy and visibility in AI answers belong to our SEO and GEO work.

What usually goes wrong, and how we prevent it

  • Content arrives last. Templates designed around placeholder text break when real copy lands. We schedule copy for the key pages before design sign-off, or write it as part of our content work.
  • A relaunch without a redirect map. Old URLs that earned links and rankings start returning 404 errors. We crawl the old site, map every URL to its new address and test the redirects on staging.
  • Leads nobody sees. Forms that email a shared inbox lose inquiries during holidays and sick leave. Every form is connected to the CRM and tested with a real submission as part of acceptance.
  • Tracking that ignores the consent banner. Analytics either fires before consent or not at all. We configure tracking and consent together and check both in the browser before launch.

What drives cost and timeline

Driver Why it changes the effort
Page templates Each template is designed, built and tested once; ten pages on one template cost less than five unique layouts.
Languages Every language needs adapted copy, its own SEO metadata and QA.
Content Writing and photography are often the longest part of the schedule.
Integrations CRM, booking, newsletter or ERP connections each need mapping and tests.
Data-driven pages A data model costs more up front and much less per page.
Logged-in areas Accounts, roles and security turn part of the site into an application.
Migration Existing content, URLs and redirects must be inventoried and moved.

We don’t publish a price list, because the same page count can describe very different projects. After a short discovery call we send a fixed-price proposal for a defined scope, or a phased plan when parts of it are still open. Our guide to website costs in Switzerland covers the cost drivers in more depth.

Hosting, data protection and accessibility

Data protection law applies to every form, analytics tool and newsletter sign-up on your site: the revised Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), in force since 1 September 2023, for data processed in Switzerland, and the GDPR for visitors in the EU. Your privacy notice has to say which data you collect, why, who processes it and in which countries. We list the processors a site actually uses and agree the hosting location with you: a Swiss data center when contracts or sector rules require it, an EU region otherwise.

On accessibility, Swiss law currently binds mainly public bodies; a revision that would extend obligations to private service providers is before parliament. If you sell online to consumers in the EU, the European Accessibility Act has applied to e-commerce services since 28 June 2025. We build to WCAG 2.1 AA by default, the level referenced by both the Swiss eCH-0059 standard and the EU standard EN 301 549.

How the website connects to the rest of your system

Most of your customer data enters through the website. Forms and bookings feed CRM and sales automation. Newsletter sign-ups start email automation with the consent recorded. Product and order data connect to your online shop or ERP through API integrations. For the whole chain from first click to signed deal, see lead generation.

Why Sensaria

Sensaria AG is a Swiss company in Lugano that builds websites and the systems behind them, so the form, the CRM pipeline it feeds and the report that shows what it produced are designed together. We work in English, Italian, German and French, with companies in Switzerland and abroad. Two sites we built show the approach: InboxRatio, a data-driven reference site with 15 free DNS and email-authentication tools, and PingMyUsers, an editorial site that also publishes a REST API and an MCP server for AI agents.

What's included

Website Development

  1. 01

    Corporate websites

    Multi-page company sites in English, German, French and Italian, structured around the questions buyers ask before they contact you.

  2. 02

    Landing pages

    Campaign and product pages with one goal each, server-side form handling and UTM capture, so paid traffic is judged by pipeline rather than clicks.

  3. 03

    Complex and data-driven websites

    Catalogs, comparisons, directories and tool pages generated from a structured data layer, so a value is entered once and stays consistent across hundreds of pages.

  4. 04

    Portals and logged-in areas

    Customer or partner areas with accounts, roles and documents, on the same codebase as the public site or as a separate application when the security model calls for it.

  5. 05

    Custom design and responsive front end

    A design system of components and tokens, built mobile-first and tested at real phone widths instead of a theme stretched to fit.

  6. 06

    Redesign and migration

    Content inventory, URL mapping and 301 redirects prepared before launch, so a relaunch keeps the rankings and backlinks the old site earned.

  7. 07

    CMS and editorial workflow

    Git-based Markdown/MDX content for teams that value speed and version history, or WordPress when several editors need a familiar admin. The choice follows who edits and how often.

  8. 08

    Website integrations

    Forms to CRM, sign-ups to your email platform, booking, chat and analytics, connected through APIs and webhooks instead of exports and copy-paste.

  9. 09

    Technical SEO foundations

    Clean URLs, XML sitemaps, hreflang, structured data (JSON-LD) and fast page loads, built in from the first template.

Typical scenarios

Typical scenarios

  • Relaunching a site that no longer matches the business

    A company that now sells three product lines still runs a site built for the first. We restructure pages around the current offer, migrate the content that ranks and redirect every old URL.

  • A multilingual site for the Swiss market

    German, French and Italian versions written as native adaptations, with hreflang pairs and a language switch that opens the equivalent page, not the home page.

  • Campaign landing pages tied to the CRM

    Each form submission creates a contact and a deal with campaign and UTM data, assigns an owner and starts a follow-up sequence, so marketing can see which campaign produced revenue.

  • A reference or comparison site driven by data

    Hundreds of pages generated from a versioned dataset with a source for every value, and build checks that stop a release when a number or a link breaks.

  • A client portal next to the public site

    Clients log in to download documents, check order status or send requests. The portal reads from the systems your team already uses through an API layer.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How much does a business website cost?

The price depends on the number of page templates, languages, who writes the content, integrations such as CRM or booking, and whether you need data-driven pages or a logged-in area. Two sites with the same page count can differ several times in effort. We don't publish a price list; after a short discovery call we send a fixed-price proposal for a defined scope, or a phased plan if parts of the scope are still open.

How long does it take to build a company website?

A focused site of 10 to 30 pages in one or two languages typically takes six to twelve weeks from kickoff to launch. Content and approvals usually set the pace more than development does. Relaunches with redirect mapping, multilingual sites and sites with CRM or ERP integrations take longer. We agree a schedule with milestones before work starts.

Do you build multilingual websites in German, French, Italian and English?

Yes. We work in all four languages and treat each version as a native adaptation, not a word-for-word translation. Each language gets its own URLs, SEO metadata and hreflang tags, and the language switch leads to the equivalent page. Search behavior differs by language and region, so keywords are researched per language.

Do you work with small businesses and SMEs?

Yes. Small and medium-sized companies are the main audience for our website work. The scope is sized to the goal: a focused site with working lead capture is often a better investment than a large site with many pages nobody maintains. We also work with larger organizations that need portals, integrations or several language markets.

Where is the website hosted, and how do you handle data protection?

We agree the hosting location with you: a Swiss data center where contracts or sector rules require it, otherwise an EU region, which the FADP treats as adequately protected. We list every processor the site uses, such as hosting, analytics, forms and email platform, so your privacy notice can name them and the countries involved. Forms collect only the fields you need.

Can you redesign our website without losing Google rankings?

Yes, if the migration is planned. We crawl the existing site, identify pages that earn traffic and backlinks, map every old URL to a new one and test the 301 redirects on staging before launch. Content that ranks is kept or improved, not dropped. After launch we monitor crawl errors and fix gaps in the first weeks.

Which CMS do you use?

It depends on who edits the site and how often. For most company sites we keep content in Git as Markdown or MDX and build with Astro or Next.js, which gives fast, secure pages and a full change history. Where several non-technical editors publish daily, WordPress with a small, maintained set of plugins can be the better fit.

Do company websites have to be accessible?

Swiss law currently sets explicit web accessibility duties mainly for public bodies, and a revision of the Disability Discrimination Act (BehiG) that would extend obligations to private service providers is before parliament. If you sell online to consumers in the EU, the European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025, with an exemption for microenterprises. We build to WCAG 2.1 AA by default.

Technology we use

  • Next.js
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Astro
  • Tailwind CSS
  • MDX
  • WordPress
  • Vercel
  • Playwright
Technology

Tell us about your project

Corporate websites, landing pages and portals built as business tools: fast, multilingual, measurable and connected to your CRM, so every inquiry arrives with its source attached.