1
time: pre-project
Scope
We’ll be looking to find out as much as we can about your project. Ideally you may have put together an outline of your project, but if not, don’t worry, we’ll work through all of this with you. We’ll be asking you about your ambitions for your new website and what would make you consider it a success.
Initial meetings usually take place over a relaxed coffee, we’ll provide an opportunity to discuss the way we work, some potential options based on your budget and help you establish the best way forward.
2
time: 1 week
Discovery
Our discovery phase is about helping us understand your business, we bring the creative and technical knowledge to the table, but we need to know about your marketplace, your competition and the challenges you face as a business. The knowledge we gain and understand about your business will be used in all future decisions and allows us to make the best possible recommendations.
As a small agency you will be speaking directly with the designer / developer of your website, there are no account managers in the middle, so our one-to-one discovery phase is a great opportunity to build a relationship with the actual person that will be building your site, often resulting in a much more finely tuned result.
3
time: 1-2 weeks
Planning
For the more complex or large scale project we will schedule in a distinct planning stage. This will encompass such aspects as site maps, site navigation and directional flow through the site. We’ll discuss requirements for content including text copy, photography and videography. We’ll also discuss social network profiles and potential integrations into your site.
If you don’t have all of these resources available or would like to discuss having these resources created at the same time as your website, we work with a wide network of creatives and professionals from copywriters to photographers that we can introduce you to.
For smaller projects this stage will be included within the Discovery phase.
4
time: 2 - 3 weeks
Design
Everything up until now has been about research and planning, but from here on in the exciting stage of creating your new site begins. We’ll start by producing detailed visuals of key pages and elements in Photoshop and we may go as far as to create small user experience UI/UX mockups to demonstrate how the user would interact with a particular element. We’ll share concepts, sketches and visual ideas with you early on to involve you in the creative process; this is your project.
If creating a brand from scratch we will tackle branding elements first before we start on the site mock-ups as this will ultimately be used to give direction to the website style and character and will follow through consistently in everything we create for you. We will generally produce 2 – 3 creative directions which will be refined with your feedback and finalised for inclusion throughout the site. These branding guidelines can also be used for any additional related print materials to be created now or in the future.
5
time: 2+ weeks
Development
The development phase is the nuts and bolts of a website build, the design has been refined and signed off, now it’s time for the development phase to bring your design to life.
We will develop your site with the current best practise SEO methods weaved into the code to ensure your site is search engine friendly and primed to perform.
While in development your website will be viewable online via one of our development servers and only you and we will have access. This gives everyone involved in the website the chance to see how all of the elements are coming together to create an online experience that will represent your business. You will get to experience the site as the end user, ensuring that it performs, functions and fulfils it’s objectives as you had envisaged.
6
time: 1 week pre-launch
Testing
We test throughout the entire build process, but in the final week before launch testing will become our focus, this includes a full code review, cleanup and optimisation. We will also cross-browser compatibility check against all modern browsers and platforms to ensure end users receive the same great consistent experience whether they be viewing your site from a laptop, tablet or mobile.
If you require support for older browsers or for specific audiences we can support this, but this must be outlined at the outset.
It’s at this stage that we will also perform ‘load time’ benchmarking on your website to see if there are any elements that can be further optimised or if there are any performance bottlenecks.
7
Average time to launch 8 weeks
Launch
The culmination of a lot of hard work and an exciting time. Your site will be moved from our development servers to its live and final environment making it viewable by the public. We’ll run through some post live checks to ensure everything moved across as it should and is running optimally.
If any special server setups have been discussed such as the configuration of globally distributed CDN (Content Delivery Network) servers or load balancing we will configure and test these services on the live server environment prior to launch.
Once live we will closely monitor search engines after the launch to ensure changes caused by an updated site map and any new content have been picked up and indexed correctly.
8
The Journey Begins
Growth & Support
Your new website is now live and the online journey has just begun. We can help build and plan a strategy for growth and support you in making data-led marketing decisions, this may lead to refinements of the site or other online marketing based on monthly analytics analysis.
We’ll also continue to work with you on demand, as required throughout your online journey as a virtual part of your marketing and creative staff.