Information Gathering
After you’ve completed contact form, I’ll get back to you to get a clear understanding of your business, the goals you wish to achieve and your target audience. If you represent an organization, this should be clarified in a website brief; which covers the type, purpose and functionality of the website. Is it going to provide information, promote a service, or sell a product? Who is the “ideal” visitor to your website? etc.
Next, I’ll outline my recommendations and suggestions in your Project Overview document and provide a price quote. If required, a technical and financial proposal can be provided.
Planning
At this point, you should have provide your content (logo, texts, photos etc.) and a Brand Identity Guide (if any) to begin the Planning phase.
Next, we’ll create a well-defined project scope plan that outlines specific activities and deliverables, along with specific timelines, you will be able to clearly set expectations.
One of the most common ways of tracking Web projects is through the use of a Gantt chart. It outlines major activities as well as tasks associated with each activity including start and end dates.
By the end of this stage, we’ll create a inspiration board – filled with visual styles and ideas to ensure the ‘feel’ and functionality of your site is spot on.
Wireframes
Once your audience and business is understood, it’s time to decide your site’s architecture – to ensure it delivers your goals.
Site architecture includes the sitemap and wireframes of pages. Creating the sitemap ensures that we’ve considered all the key pages in the site, showing their relationship to each other and defining how the sties overall navigation should be structured.
If beneficial, I will create wireframes for the key pages based around your draft content and the features your site needs. These ‘website blueprints’ make it easy to see the layout, information hierarchy, and functional elements of your website – before we move onto design visuals.
Although they do not show any actual design elements, the wireframes provide a guide for defining content hierarchy on the page.
Design
Once the blueprint for the site has been defined through the creation of the sitemap and wireframes, the next step is to create the visual design also known as a concept or prototype.
At this point, your platform takes shape. It contains colors, logos, images and demonstrates the basic functional. The layout’s primary purpose is to visualize the content and informational structure of the website.
Taking inspiration from everything we’ve discussed, I’ll create design visuals for an agreed number of key pages
Once the layout has been developed, you’ll get the opportunity to give feedback. If for any reason, something is out of sync with the design and business goals, we return to the first stage and repeat the web development life cycle until you are completely satisfied.
Development
At the development stage, the graphic elements designed for the prototype is converted into an actual website; all pages are developed, new content, images and other media are added.
It is here we integrate or develop a content management system (CMS), add special features (e.g., shopping carts, payment solutions, interactive contact forms, etc.). and responsive design that adheres to today’s technical standards, ensuring smartphone, tablet and laptop users alike can interact with your website.
By the end of this stage your website will be coded, your content will be uploaded into the CMS, and your site will be ready to go live.
Testing
Testing of the site is critical as there will inevitably be issues that need to be addressed before the site goes live. At this stage the site will need to be reviewed on multiple browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer) and multiple devices (laptops, tablets, and mobile) to see if and where breaks occur.
The highest priority task is to grant complete functionality of forms and scripts, regardless of the way the website is viewed.
Launch
The day is finally here!
You’ve tested the site, had it reviewed and approved by the project stakeholders, and you’re ready to launch. This can be done in three different ways:
a) you provide access to your hosting and domain registration and I do all the work to launch your website;
b) you grant access to a subdomain created on your website, I deliver the website, but it is your specialists who transmit it to the main domain and launch;
c) I send you an archive file with all data, and your specialists launch the website.
The final step is making the website viewable to the public.