Introduction
We understand that the idea of creating a new website can sound quite daunting. We’re here to help make it as smooth and successful as possible. To give you a better idea of what we do and how we can work together, we’ve summarised our web design process into a 7-step process. Our goal is to provide you with a satisfying outcome and to help you see the value in your investment.
Please keep in mind that every website is unique and we’ll tailor our approach to your specific needs and goals. We also understand that time and budget are important factors and we’ll work with you to find the most efficient and cost-effective solution. Whether your project is small or large, we’re committed to delivering the best possible result for your budget.
1
Discovery
The Discovery phase is all about information-gathering. It’s important for us to understand something about your business, customers and competition as well as the website’s main purpose i.e. to generate more sales, leads, enquiries and so on.
We would also like to know something about your budget and timescales for the project so that we can scope the work correctly and deliver to realistic deadlines.
We’d also like to understand whether you’ve already have the content (mainly text & images for each page) for the site and whether you’ll need help in creating it.
An important question is who will maintain the site? Once the site is complete, do you want to change the pages yourselves or would you prefer us to do that on your behalf? If you prefer to make updates yourselves, we can plan some training, if required.
We will also of course be happy to answer any questions you may have.
2
Planning
Now that we’ve understood your requirements, we can plan the structure of the site and discuss the required pages. We can also then look at the content required for each page and other possible functionality. For example, social media links, contact forms, newsletter signups and so on to achieve the aims of the website.
We may send you a link to some sample sites to try and get a feel for the style of your website.
Once we understand the scope of the work, we can agree a price for developing the site and for hosting, if accepted we will send you the following:
We will need your content (text and image etc.) in order to move to the next stage. We will create a document with the details of the required text content and a directory for you to submit your images to. If you prefer us to write the content for you we’ll provide you with a quote for that.
3
Design
During the design phase, we will consider how your content will be arranged on each page as agreed in the planning phase. We may mock up some pages or parts of pages so it’s easier to visualise the final result.
We can also discuss colour schemes & typography and arrange for the creation of a logo if required.
4
Build
Once the design is agreed, we can start to build the site, create the pages, incorporate the colour scheme, place the logo, pages and content, forms and any agreed custom functionality. We will keep you up to date with the progress.
5
Testing
The test phase is really to check that the whole site functions together as intended and to ensure a flawless rollout. This includes ensuring that:
6
Launch
Finally it’s time to launch the site, this really means making the site available on the internet via its domain name (i.e. www.yourname.com), this can take up to 24 hours to take effect.
Once live, you can make an announcement via your social media channels, email etc. If the site is new, you may wish to add a link to it to in the footer of your company email templates.
If you are to maintain the site yourselves, full access needs to be handed over to you at this point. We can provide some training if required.
If you had a website with a different supplier, the hosting for that site can now be cancelled.
7
Reviews and Updates
Once your site is live we suggest having regular reviews internally and with us to highlight any required changes and keep the site up to date and consider any further improvements.
If you’ve opted for us to maintain the site, all changes should be requested via email.