Our Website Project Process
We know that developing a website can be a daunting task. That’s why we put together this little article on our website project process. We hope it gives you a heads up of what to expect if you choose to work with us on your website project and (hopefully) makes the project run as smoothly as possible.
Planning
Before we even land a project, we put in a fair share of time to truly understand the project and everything it entails to put together the most accurate estimate we can. More than likely, we will have created a site map to figure out the site structure along with outlining (and pricing out) any features that you may have requested or ones that we feel would be useful. Most of our estimates include a la carte items (like responsive design, WordPress CMS) so that you can pick and choose exactly what goes into your site. We’ll also figure out the important stuff like your hosting and domain name and email accounts and get everything set up so we don’t start scrambling once you say you’re ready to launch.
Design
Once you’ve decided to allow us to take on your project (yay!) we will start designing. We create a mockup of what your site will look like so you can get a feel for the color scheme and any design elements that we will be using. This is the best time to make changes or offer suggestions for the design because once we start the next step, it becomes more time consuming (and costly) to make these design changes.
Programming
During this stage, we’ll be creating the actual website on our development server. The only way that anyone will be able to access it is through a link that we provide. This is where we’ll add in all features that we agreed upon in the estimate. We’ll also be adding in content and photos so we’ll need have all content by this time.
Testing
Once the site is all put together, we’ll go through and test all the features. Once we’ve completed our internal review, we’ll let you know so that you can do your own review and testing to make sure the new site is exactly what you hoped for. Once you approve – it’s on to the last step!
Launch!
Depending on where you’ve elected to host your site and what day of the week it is (we’re not even joking), we can have your site launched (an exact copy of the approved development site transferred over to your permanent host) in a few hours. Our rules for launch:
- We don’t launch sites after 3pm.
- We don’t launch sites on Fridays.
Why these rules? We prefer to monitor the site for the first few hours and the day after to make sure everything is working correctly and that there aren’t any issues.
Post-Launch
This step in the process really depends on the project. Sometimes, there’s not much to do after the site launches. But, if you’ve elected to add a CMS or any additional features, this is when we’ll schedule training to show you how to make use of these added values.
Obviously, each website project is different and may require additional steps but this is basically what you can expect our website project process to look like. If you have any questions or would like us to give you an estimate on your we site, contact us today!
