Through our many successful years of business we have developed an effective and scalable process to deliver the best website experience for our clients. And we’ll be here to support you long after it’s complete to help ensure ongoing success.
Define & Discover
Design & Style
Develop & Deploy
The design of your website often represents the most immediate impression your customers will have of who you are. It is the best opportunity to knock their socks off.
Define & Discover
Have you ever wondered why website projects go wrong? How come a website just doesn’t live up to its potential? Or how really great websites that make an impact for their organization are created?
By working with both small and large businesses since 1995 we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.
Almost always, websites fail in their potential because they do not have a strong creative and strategic direction. This is certainly true for small “inexpensive” websites. And, we’ve also found a lack of direction happens just as often with medium sized sites, sometimes more so. Larger websites are often just “put together” with something that resembles pretty, or are built off of a laundry list of “needs” without a real understanding of priority, or are too focused on information organization (like a Dewey Decimal System!), and ultimately, do not speak in a compelling and impactful way to their audience(s).
Usage Modeling
User Experience
Information Architecture
Workshops not Meetings
We’re not a big, bloated agency with too many mouths to feed and a ton of time to kill. We’re lean and efficient, and are productive every step of the way. That’s why most of our meetings are workshops. We work hard and smart.
We will scale our workshops up or down to ensure that small projects with small budgets still begin with a clear focus and solid strategy for success. And, larger projects get the proper attention they need to actually achieve their objectives.
In the early Define and Discovery stages of your project we focus on three major considerations:
- Determine how your new website will best satisfy your user base and your business objectives
- Understand the communication, design, and interactive experience your users will best respond to
- And ensure the content and navigation structure of your website is streamlined, coherent, and intuitive for your users.
Usage Modeling: This workshop seeks to clarify your business goals, define and understand your users, and flush out the specifics of what they want to accomplish and of what you want them to do. The results of the workshop help define the true project scope and prioritize tasks and features. It is often the case that we uncover important features not originally considered by anyone, yet reveal themselves to be instrumental in the project’s success.
User Experience: The more we understand about your audience, the better we can appeal to them. Are they more inclined to explore and discover, or will they come with deliberate objectives to gather specific information or perform a particular transaction? Or, maybe both? Our User Experience workshop helps focus our approach to how we design and build. It also helps refine content messaging and overall content presentation.
Information Architecture: Once we understand more about your goals, users, products and services, we can construct the overall framework of your website or mobile app, including navigation and page content layout. The results of this workshop help us build a site map and wire frames which are used not only to inform design and build, but are also tool to help with your content development and presentation.
And what wonderful outcomes will all this get you?
- Develop a super clear understanding of the organizational/business goals that your website must satisfy in order to be considered successful.
- Clarify and prioritize your website audience (users), and determine how they will use the site; the content they’re seeking; the experience they need to have in order to engage with the site long enough to learn and do the things you want for and from them.
- Understand how comprehensive (or not) your website build needs to be in order to satisfy your organization/business goals and audience needs.
- Develop a bigger picture understanding of the role your website plays in your larger marketing & communication plan and your overall business development strategy.
- Analysis of all key site elements to help ensure the website build requirements decisions are supported by the factual data we collect, rather than on opinions and ideas.
- Provide a clear understanding of budget requirements including where to put and how to prioritize your dollars.
- Uncover and clarify the information needed for you to assemble a Request for Proposals for your site build. Or, to be begin your project within your budget with very clear expectations for phase 1 (if the “big vision” is bigger than the budget).
- Provide you with an organized opportunity to gather input and cooperation from your team, and to clarify everyone’s role in the success of the project.
- Get the guidance you need from industry professionals (us) in figuring out all of the above!
Ready to talk about your digital marketing needs? Get in touch.
Design & Style
It is a given that design must speak to your brand and appeal to your audience, but beyond these basics, design also provides an opportunity to show the world that you are better today than you were yesterday. The design process should seek to do more than simply adhere to your brand identity, it should strive to elevate it.
Concepts
Static Designs
Front-end Styling
While design should be uniquely you, our process of getting it right is as methodical as it is creative. And remember, we’re big on scalability, and the design of even the smallest projects with the smallest budgets follow these 3 simple steps in the design process to ensure you get what you’re looking for, and what’s right for your business.
Concepts: The initial app or website design concepts are the first collection of designs you will see from us. They will be based on our research of your industry and the workshop results that speak to your business objectives and your target audience. We will design key aspects of your site or app, the home or landing screens for example, to clarify the vision for project’s design. We’ll work with you to get this right before moving on, including providing alternative mock-ups as needed.
Static Design Collection: This process of design and revision confirms the look of your website or app. We present static designs for all unique pages and page components, which in turn are applied to the entire website or app build. If this is a website project we will also present the design of unique mobile screens. If the project is for a mobile app, we will present sample designs for selected and additional form factors.
Front-end Styling: This is where the magic happens; where the designs come to life in the working website or app. It is the part of the process where we ensure the integrity of the original design vision is maintained regardless of how and where you’re viewing it. Every WordPress website design is responsive, and every mobile app looks good across multiple smart phones.
Every project, large or small, begins with your vision of what it can be, and your objectives for what you want to achieve.
Develop and Deploy
In the early planning stages of the project we will have defined the development requirements clearly, and much of this work will have begun alongside the design process. Wireframes are handed over to our designers and our WordPress developers at the same time, and the work runs in parallel to ensure efficiency and timely delivery.
Base Development
Custom Features
Test & Deploy
Base Development: There are a number of setup and configuration requirements that are common to most every WordPress website and mobile app build. We’ve done it a thousand times and have got this work down pat. Our efficiencies in this early set up stages help us keep our costs down and ensure that most of the time we spend is with the features that are unique to your requirements.
Custom Features: The custom features for your project will have been determined in the early Define and Discover stages, and will have been planned out in detail by the time their development starts. The term “custom” can refer to a wide range of features ranging from advanced functionality, such as an enhanced search, to less common features that may be specific to your vision for your site or app.
Quality Testing: Before anything we build is released to the public, we conduct thorough testing to ensure everything looks and works the way it is supposed to. And once we’re done, we advise your team to take everything for a test drive. In addition to being the time for us to correct any bugs, we also use this time to ensure you have the training you need to handle the tasks you plan to maintain after launch.
Deployment & Hosting: In the case of WordPress websites, we can deploy the site to your hosting service, but also offer hosting if you need it. In the case of mobile apps, we can look after all the steps required to get the app published to the Apple App Store or Google Play.
Did you really read through this entire page? There’s even more we’d like to tell you about how we work hard and smart to make every project successful. We’d love you to get in touch with us. There’s a contact form just a few pixels down. How can we help you?