Our Design and Development Process

Our goal is to create a solution that works for you.

We aim to make the design and development process as enjoyable as possible. This is a general process for a website project; we tailor the process to suit the client.

Beginning

1. Understanding your goals, needs and wants

We like to meet face to face to have a conversation about what you're looking for.

The better we understand your business and target market, the better we can align the website design and development to meet your goals. This is very much a dialogue and we hope you'll ask us as many questions as we ask you. Sometimes a face to face isn't feasible, which is why Skype is great for video chats and there's always the phone!

2. Formalising what will be done in a quote

A fixed price quote to deliver what you need.

After our chat, we'll have a think on how we can help you.We may come back to you with a few more queries before creating a quote. The quote will outline what you can expect from us, what we expect from you and costs. Depending on the nature of the project, we will also include initial design sketches, colour schemes and fonts. 

The quote is a scope of work. If there's a feature or function that isn't in it, please let us know.

Middle

3. Ready, set, GO!

Once you're happy with the quote, we ask for a 50% down payment before beginning work on your project.

We'll send over an initial shopping list of what we need from you. This tends to vary depending on what's being done, but it usually includes your logo and any brand identity documents you have (unless we're designing your logo!).

We create static mock ups to show some of the page designs and work with you to agree what the navigation of the site will be. Knowing the navigation helps to inform what content will be needed and, if we're doing the copywriting, it means we can make a start on outlining what the message on each page will be. A set amount of changes are agreed in the quote and we're quite happy that we tend to get most of the design right on the first mock up.

We tend to start with the large/desktop view. Even though viewing on mobile devices is on the rise, desktop tends to be where the majority of views come from. Once the desktop view is agreed, we can then start looking at how the site changes for medium/tablet and small/smartphone screens.

4. Development site / demo

Once the mock up has been refined and agreed, we start coding.

Having the site on a development url means you can view it and have a proper play and test on it as things progress. We start with the homepage and the core elements of a site; the header and footer. During the middle phase, it's great when clients get excited about what's happening and come up with new ideas. If the project changes from the agreed quote, we'll let you know and any additional costs will be added to the final invoice.

5. Page templates and content

Depending on the project, sometimes individual page templates are needed to change the design for different types of content.

This is also the point where content (words and visuals) start to go into the site so it comes alive.

6. Testing

Once the content has gone in, we test on:

• Latest version of Chrome
• Latest version of Safari
• Latest version of FireFox
• Internet Explorer (IE) 9+
  We can retrofit for older versions of IE at an additional cost.
• Android tablet and smartphone
• Apple tablet and smartphone

Depending on what's been agreed, we check the design across either all break-points or agreed break-points to ensure the user has a great experience. Whenever possible, we recommend that clients have a small group of end users that they can ask to test the website before it goes live. Putting the demo site in the hands of those who will eventually use it on an ongoing basis is a great way to fine tune and tweak.

7. Training

We believe all website owners should have the power to edit their own content by using a what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor.

We create a user manual for you and also offer one-to-one training either in-person, over the phone or on Skype. We'll provide you with day to day login details for anyone who will be editing the site and an omniscient account that lets you do a lot more. Keeping these accounts seperate is just an additional security measure.

Ever After

8. It's Alive!!! 

Once everyone's happy, we go live! We'll agree a day and time of day to go live. We are able to go live outside of working hours. We'll talk you through what's needed to go live. Depending on hosting and things, DNS changes may be needed.

We'll also send you an invoice for the balance of the project as quoted. 

9. We're still here for you

Once it's live we're still here for you. Just because you can make changes to the site doesn't mean you have to, so we're here to help. We can either set up a support contract or work with you on an ad hoc basis - whatever works best for you.

We recommend a one month review to see how the site's performing. Sometimes this is as simple as, yes, working great! Other times, it's making little tweaks that have come about after the site being in the hands of end users. Analytics data is great for this, but nothing beats just simply listening to someone who uses the site.