The SLC Web Design Process
Step 1: RESEARCH YOUR MARKET
There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. One of the most valuable steps is to research the websites of your competitors. We strongly recommend spending an hour searching online for your industry's products or services. See which of your competitors rank highly in the search engine results. Review their websites. Do their sites flatter their products and services? If you were a potential customer, which of your competitors would you be likely to call based on their web presence? Sometimes an excellent website can make a relatively small company appear like a major industry player? When reviewing your competitors' websites, what works and what doesn't? Make a note of the features that you like and those that you don't like. It's usually more productive to discuss specifics like "I like the way the company's phone number is clearly listed at the top of each page", than generalities such as "I want my company's site to be easy to use."
As Ronald Reagan said, "Trust, but verify." The more involved you are in providing direction, the more successful we'll be in providing you and your company with a website that meets your needs.
Step 2: OUTLINE
In order to provide you with an accurate, written budget and proposal, we need to know the scope of your project. What are the different sections of your website? Almost all company sites have an "About Us", "Contact Us" and then detail the products and/or services that your business offers to customers. What are the required production values? Higher budget websites will include elegant flash animation and custom illustration. Will you require a content management system to make changes yourselves, or will we be updating the site for you? Are there any other functional elements of the website that will need to be developed? Password protected area for secure document storage or retreival? Photo Gallery? Blog? Searchable database of properties?
Step 3: BUDGET AND PROPOSAL
Based on the information from steps 1 and 2, we will provide you with a written budget and proposal that provides a line item budget for the completion of your project from start to finish. We pride ourselves in providing high-value, cost-effective websites for our clients.
Step 4: SERVICE AGREEMENT
If you'd like to proceed, we will provide you with a written service agreement that outlines the budget, scope of work, and payment schedule. In order to begin work on new projects, we request a signed service agreement and a deposit that is usually equal to one-third of the project budget.
Step 5: DESIGN
At this point, our graphic designers will review all of the materials and assets provided by you, the Client, and create up to three initial design concepts from which you can choose. These design concepts, or mock-ups, are snapshots of the homepage and internal page(s) templates. Typically, we perform up to three graphic design revisions of the selected design concept to arrive at an approved design.
Step 6: DESIGN
At this point, our graphic designers will review all of the materials and assets provided by you, the Client, and create up to three initial design concepts from which you can choose. These design concepts, or mock-ups, are snapshots of the homepage and internal page(s) templates. Typically, we perform up to three graphic design revisions of the selected design concept to arrive at an approved design.
Step 7: DEVELOPMENT
Once the graphic design has been approved, our programmers proceed to the development, or programming, phase of the project. At this point, our developers transform the mockups into functional HTML pages. Pages are coded using search-engine friendly and printer-friendly techniques such as sequestering all javascript and CSS into neatly organized external files. We also make our websites easy to update by placing commonly referenced sections of the pages such as navigation elemets and page footers into external files.
Step 8: BROWSER COMPATIBILITY TESTING
After page templates are coded into HTML,we perform comprehensive browser compatibility testing
to ensure superior performance for all site visitors regardless of the computer that they're using. Testing is performed on all operating systems (i.e. PC, Mac, Unix platforms) and browsers (i.e. Internet Explorer versions 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, 8.x, Netscape versions 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, 8.x, Mozilla, Safari, Chrome, America Online, FireFox) to ensure cross browser compatibility and consistent usability and performance on all browsers and platforms.
Step 9: PROPAGATION
At this point, we move to create all of the individual pages of the new website. Now we will need all of the page content (i.e. text) for the individual site pages. We typically ask that our clients provide at least a rough draft of the content for these pages since our clients typically understand their own business, products and services better than anyone. We can help you edit the content, but we still need the basics from you. During this phase, the site will be placed on a password-protected staging server and is available for client review.
Step 9: TESTING AND REVIEW
The website is extensively tested on the staging server and all pages are available for review. We recommend printing each page and reviewing the text content on a hard copy. We find that it's easier to read critically on paper as opposed to on screen. All links are checked and pages retested on a variety of browsers and operating systems.
Phase 10: LAUNCH
After all testing and corrections are completed, the site is ready for launch.
Call us at -- (801) 633-4262 -- for a free consultation.