About us
Intent GmbH builds and maintains websites, online shops and web solutions for companies. The name comes from the Latin intentus – determined, attentive, focused. That describes the way we work fairly well: a project has a goal, and what gets built is measured against it.
We are based in Ulm and work mainly for small and medium-sized companies. Full service here means that concept, design, development, operations and marketing all come from one house. The benefit is less about convenience than about clear responsibility: when something does not work, there is no debate over whether the design, the code or the server is at fault.
What we work on
Most of our projects fall into four areas. In retail we build and maintain online shops – from choosing the shop system through connecting inventory management and payment providers to further development while the shop is running. Where standard systems do not fit because the business model follows its own logic, the applications are built in-house instead.
Alongside that sits everything that makes sure a finished site is actually found and used: search engine optimisation, advertising, analysis, and the rebuilding of pages that get visitors but no conversions. And finally operations – many clients have us host their projects, because development and server operations then sit in the same hands.
Yannik Süß, founder and managing director
Yannik Süß has worked in web and e-commerce for more than two decades. In that time he has led web projects of varying size, from company websites to e-commerce platforms with connected inventory management and their own reporting logic. For years one focus has been data-driven decisions – that is, turning what a shop or a website produces in the way of data into a usable basis for decisions, rather than into confirmation of a hunch.
He holds a master’s degree in Strategic IT Management. The combination of theory and day-to-day practice also shows in his publications.
Books
His book E-Commerce für klein- und mittelständische Unternehmen was published by Springer and is now in its second edition, as a paperback and as an e-book. Across eleven chapters it works through setting up an online shop: concept and budget planning, choice of software and hosting, design and corporate identity, usability, legal requirements, payment and shipping processes, search engine optimisation and marketing. The book is written in German; the chapter overview and bibliographic details are on the book page.
Two further titles have come out of the same work. Germany – The Handbook for Foreign Companies and Founders is aimed at foreign companies that want to found or expand in Germany, and is written in English. An English-language title on IT infrastructure covers data centres, cloud models such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, and the question of how to set up IT operations so that they survive failure.
How the team works
A web designer is not an expert on backlink profiles, and a programmer is not a copywriter. The team is therefore organised by discipline: development, design, copy, online marketing and operations. Every task goes to someone who is good at it – which is why we do not concentrate a project on one person, even though that would make coordination simpler.
From the outside it still stays one point of contact. You describe what you need or what is not working; distributing it internally is our job.
Work happens in steps, not in one grand sweep. Concept, draft, implementation and sign-off run in sections that you can see and judge as they come. That costs more coordination than a project delivered finished after four months, but it avoids the situation where something stands there at the end that misses the actual need.
What we do not promise is rankings, jumps in revenue, or dates by which an investment pays for itself. Nobody can make such commitments credibly. What we can tell you is which steps we consider worthwhile, what they cost, and what will later show whether they worked.
Company history
The company grew out of YS-Consulting in 2016, which was renamed Intent GmbH. In the same year two websites from the SEO field were acquired, internetmarketingagentur.de and seo-ranking-tools.de; seo-radio.de followed in 2017.
In the iBusiness list of German SEO service providers, Intent GmbH placed 17th for the fourth quarter of 2016 and 39th in the 2017 assessment. In 2018 came certification as a Google Partner and admission to the Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft, the German association for the digital economy. In December 2018 the company received the BITMi seal “Software Hosted in Germany” for its hosting.
Let’s talk
Whether a new project is coming up, an existing site is not delivering what it should, or the only question so far is whether something is worth doing at all: tell us briefly what it is about – via the contact page or straight away with a slot in the calendar.