Services

Our Mix: The Best Mashup You've Never Heard

Since 1994, we've designed digital experiences that grow with your organization. Check out our distinctive blend of expertise and experience.

Digital Stategy

Long gone are the days of just putting a site up. We work future-forward to ensure that the digital experience we design meets the demands of always-changing technologies and audiences. From platform selection to actionable roadmaps, White Horse strategists will actively guide your company to solutions that are achievable and have a long-term, high return on investment. Our strategic approach also keeps top of mind the importance of engaging internal stakeholders, both to uncover and account for internal processes and perspectives, as well as to build the consensus that's essential to the success of your digital channels.

User Experience

At White Horse, the user comes first, next, and last. User-centered design has been the centerpiece of all our development since 1999, and that experience has taught us that the best sites exist at the nexus of user needs (both internal and external) and business goals. Our UX designers collaborate with our team and your team to align design, technical, and business processes with customer needs, a process that helps identify site requirements early and reduces risk.

Our success in designing user-centered sites is the result of our philosophy of focused collaboration and our proven practice of persona-led design. With more than a decade worth of persona projects, we can legitimately call ourselves early adopters and innovators in the use of this critical tool. In fact, a leading industry analyst named White Horse among the top user-centered design agencies in the nation.

Visual Design

Visual design is all about personality: your customers' perception of who you are and how you operate. Our approach combines imagery that builds a relationship and tells a story with layouts and navigational tools that help your users easily navigate your site. We emphasize opportunities for more immersive digital interactions using new technologies for experiential design, all the while working hand in glove with UX and engineers.

Engineering

When technology's done right, it should seem invisible. Where beautiful form meets flawless function, our Microsoft Gold Certified engineers do everything from custom development to API integration.

We focus on Microsoft ASP.NET using C# and Microsoft SQL Server platforms. Our websites and mobile solutions are developed with the goal of maximizing extensibility and re-usability, while striving to leverage your existing technology investment. Our repertoire also includes RIAs, jQuery mobile, .NET applications, and hosting.

CMS

At White Horse, we have the skills and experience to work with any number of web content management platforms. But over the years we have built strategic relationships with the following platforms, which allows us to provide options and features that fit a variety of specific needs and budgets. Strategic planning and technical discovery helps us match and build the CMS solution perfect for your business needs.

Ektron | Sitecore | Umbraco | WordPress

For our customers on PHP/Lamp stacks, we have industry partners to support the application development and deployment.

Mobile

Designing with the customers' entire product experience journey in mind, we optimize for how users interact with touchscreens and consume mobile content. Our mobile-first design process ensures that your site will scale to the optimal mobile experience. No matter what your project's size or scale, we include mobile design and build as part of our process. With so much chatter going on about mobile, it's tough to wade through all the choices and buzzwords. We turn down the noise to help you focus on a long-term strategy that makes sense for your organization and doesn't waste your digital investment.

We offer mobile web applications, mobile websites, responsive template design, application design for Android, iPhone, and Windows 7 applications with jQuery Mobile, HTML5, and SMS.

White Horse Studio

White Horse began as one of the premier music recording studios in the Northwest in 1980, and we continued its legacy by maintaining a professional audio and video production component. Josh Millman, well-respected audio engineer, producer/director, music composer, and voiceover actor (he's the voice of Nintendo Wii Sports!), manages and runs White Horse Studio. Contact Josh (studio@whitehorse.com)

Experience some of our work:

Search & Social

The right content across relevant social channels helps your customers find you; it drives traffic to your online and offline presence. Content marketing is a hot topic these days, and many agencies will try to sell it to you, but it doesn't make sense for everyone. We only recommend it when it fits your strategic objectives.

Our SEO, paid search, and content services for websites and mobile involve the strategic guidance of an SEO specialist, the social seeding abilities of social media strategist, the page architecture skills of a user experience architect, the coding skills of an interface developer, and in some cases, the writing skills of a content specialist. Our cross-discipline approach is key to our success.

SEO: Strategy and planning, implementation, ongoing optimization, content development, monthly and quarterly reporting.

Paid Search: For companies just getting into PPC White Horse's strategy and planning, ongoing campaign management, optimization, and reporting offer the perfect way to make a business case for funding ongoing initiatives. Once our customers have increased their spend in the category, we help them transition to more commodity-based approaches.

Social Content: Seeding/influencer targeting; community strategy, design, and management; viral marketing.

B2B

We've long been recognized for our strong portfolio of B2B successes by organizations such as BtoB magazine and leading industry analysts. We know that B2B is relationship driven with longer and more complex sales cycles, and the role of digital spans the full customer life cycle. So we craft digital solutions to match that life cycle from consideration to ongoing service and support. We support marketing departments through content targeting and segmentation that generate leads and support your offline sales channels with rich product demos, video, and presentation tools.

B2C

B2C websites are all about your consumer. You need to get them to take action and feel good about doing it. It's an emotional sell and brand perception is all-important. Our solutions engage your customers and lead them to a decision, whether it's to buy, call, or visit. Then we help you nurture them as loyal customers. Our services include websites to tablets to in-store mobile experiences and location-based solutions to reach your customers no matter where they are. So whether they need to buy some new home hardware, technology, or sporting goods, or are looking for a great bottle of wine, we can help you capture their business.

Higher Education

An education website is a recruitment tool, providing a window on its community and personality. It's an indicator of the institution's overall quality. When making a choice for a school, students and their parents have a lot to choose from. Therefore, your site needs to really stand out, reflect your qualities and virtues, and romance the prospective student. Education websites must account for the needs of multiple audiences and structure a lot of information in an easy to find way. Multiple channels are essential; today's students are more tuned in to interactive channels (mobile, social media, YouTube) than ever. Search engine optimization is necessary to help students find you.

American Institutes of Research | Loyola University Medicine | University of Washington Medicine | University of Pittsburgh

Financial Services

In today's economic situation, financial and insurance websites must convey a feeling of trustworthiness, stability, and loyalty. While building a solid relationship with the customer, the site must also address ethical, legal, and regulatory concerns. Imagery must reflect the fact that financial decisions are emotional. Complex financial particulars need to be clear with simple navigation and intuitive paths to the right information and simple navigation. Key to meeting customer needs is the knowledge that mobile devices are becoming the channel of choice for accessing financial information.

Rabobank | HSBC Card | Wells Fargo | Household Bank

Government

Government and municipal websites must deliver on the organization's mission and objectives, it's also important to comply with ethical, legal, and regulatory requirements. Security is essential. Site visitors want clear paths to information, simple navigation, and acknowledgement of their needs with relevant functionality and content. Sites must address the complexity of multiple internal stakeholders and a diverse constituency. Easy-to-use content management solutions are essential for efficiently maintaining changing content while ensuring a consistent look and feel. Download our Capabilities statement.

Federal Library and Information Center Committee/FEDLINK-Website | U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer Oregon's 3rd District | National Center for APEC Website | Oregon Department of Transportation | Sonoma County California Website and CMS | Napa County California Website | Multnomah County Oregon Website Strategy | City of Chicago Millennium Park Website

Hospital Networks

Digital healthcare projects are a special breed, requiring the skill to work with a complex organization as well as specific ethical, legal, and regulatory requirements. That's where our experience adds value. We also know that your website or mobile experience needs to build a trustworthy relationship with your audiences, so we develop friendly, calming experiences that reflect a sense of wellness, all the while maintaining a professional tone. The user experience is critical since customers often come to the site with a specific goal in mind, requiring clear navigation, simplified task paths, and multiple ways to search. The ability to search for content is vital. With more and more consumers using their mobile devices to access healthcare information and track their healthy activities, sites optimized for mobile and tablets are essential.

University of Washington Medicine | Community Health Network | Loyola Medicine | WebMD Health Services | East Texas Medical Center

Non-Profit

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We believe in a "360-degree" customer experience across the digital channels your customers use. Our approach is cross-disciplinary; expertise is shared so that the whole team knows what's possible and why. We know that a coordinated effort is far more likely to lead to a great design. We always work from the belief that user experience is about action, visual design is about perception, and technology is the great enabler. When these three actors work in concert, your company succeeds.

Been there, done that. Over the years, we've become experts in these industries. We know the gears that turn your business the complexities of your organizational infrastructure, your customers, and how you can succeed in a digital world. That means no industry learning curve, proactive thinking, and speaking your language.

Culture

We work hard, and we play hard. Our Portland roots mean we're boundary-pushing, edgy, independent, entrepreneurial, tree-hugging, creative, experiential (!), outdoorsy, satirical, ironic, organic, and quirky. We thrive on problem-solving, visioning, and understanding current culture, human behavior, and all things geeky. We love invention and reinvention; take a look at our space, transformed from a run-down warehouse in Portland's historic Hollywood district to our cozy home away from home.

Immerse yourself in our experience.

Our Story

Our story spans 30+ years, and throughout that time, we've been dedicated to upholding our core values contributing positively to our world and our community. We embrace sustainability, education for our children, support for our veterans, and a healthy environment in which we can all thrive.

First the facts:

We're Oregon's longest-standing web development agency and a private, woman-owned, WBENC-certified small business. The company was founded in 1980 and has been creating Web experiences since 1994. From our roots in early interface development for CD-ROMs, White Horse became one of the nation's first user-focused digital agencies. We built our first website for IBM in 1994, and soon after created a user-centered design practice that has become the cornerstone of our agency and been recognized by a leading industry analyst.

Now our philosophy:

Bigger isn't better. We're a small, practical organization that gets things done for our clients. A flat organizational structure means that you'll always know the people on your account and can access them when you need. Everyone is responsible for our clients' projects, and we take that responsibility very seriously. Our size and structure allow us to offer our clients exceptionally high value, innovative creative, and an outstanding customer service experience. We think that sets us apart, and we hope you'll partake in that experience.