The Design Process
Over the years I’ve streamlined the website design and development process to ensure that we have a great foundation of information on which to create the website that you need for your business.
Research, Strategy and Content Gathering
Questionnaire
The first step is to research:
- Your target audience
- What they would want from at your website
- How you want them to feel when looking at your site
- What you want to get out of your website
- Who your competitors are and what they are doing
I make this easier by providing a simple questionnaire for you to fill in. It’s important to provide as much information as possible at this stage.
Discovery
A discovery meeting is a one to one conversation where we drill down into the information you gave me in the questionnaire. This conversation can reveal information that the client didn’t realize was important. On occasion that information can change the direction of the whole project!
Content
After the meeting, it’s time to gather your content in the form of text, photos, illustrations or videos. The type of content we need will have been identified in the previous steps. This content might be a straight lift from your current website or a reworking of your current website content, or entirely new work.
To make life easier, I can provide you with a prototype design concept and some online references that will help you in this process.
Website Design and Development
Wireframe and Design
The build starts with something called a wireframe. A wireframe is similar to an artist painting with large blocks of paint before working on the detail of the picture. In our case, the wireframe will show the structure of the page. This will include the size and locations of the various elements and how they interact. To make sure the structure stands out, you won’t see colours, fonts and photos at this stage.
Build
The branding is applied, the content is added, and the final designs will be converted into web page templates on the staging server.
Test and Launch
Test
The site will be thoroughly tested on laptops, tablets and cell phones to ensure that it looks just as good on all three. All functionality such as forms, links, basic SEO, calendars and, if you’re a realtor, MLS feeds, will be tested to make sure that they’re working as expected
Launch
Once the project is complete, the testing is done, and project is signed off, your new website will be copied to your live website server!
At this point you can send out your press release, blog about it on social media and/or initiate your media campaigns.
