Web Design Explained. The Design Process
We design your website with you, for you, and to help you.
Your website’s purpose should be to support and enhance the goals of your business or organization. That’s why, at ireckon, we follow our 6 step design process to ensure you are provided with a website that suits YOUR needs. Nothing in the process is 'brain surgery', but by following a simple process and set of steps that you can also understand means we can focus on the creative and technical side and you know exactly where your project is at.
Step 1. Free Initial Consultation
We begin our process by taking the time to get to know your business and your requirements from the start. We find out the objectives of your business or organization, the purpose of your website, who you want to target, and will take the time to run you through the technologies that are available to you.
Step 2 Brief & Quotation Developed
From our initial meeting and/or discussions with you, we provide a written brief together with an initial quotation. This quotation will show the itemized costs for all elements that make up your website process. Depending upon your requirements, this could include such things as design costs, programming and database costs, content management charges, hosting charges or search engine marketing costs. You’ll know the full cost of your website, including any recurring charges, upfront. There are no hidden extras.
Step 3 Project Planning
We plan all elements needed to get your website built and then live. We review such items as your domain name and hosting requirements. We confirm the website site map and work through all the functionality of each page / section. A site map is a visual model of all the pages required for your website that shows all the ways site visitors will be channeled to the information they need.
Step 4 Design and Development
We produce an initial design based on the full brief, incorporating any existing materials and brand rules you may have. The initial design is sent to you in electronic format and we continue to work with you until you are 100% satisfied with the design. You’ll sign off on the design so we can then commence building the actual site as web pages. Each one of our web design projects is first created on a staging site. Here you can view the ongoing development, make suggestions, test the site just as if it were up live on the Internet.
We build your website incorporating basic search engine optimization techniques, ensuring your website will get found on the search engines. We’ll coordinate content with you, provide custom designed tools if required, and engage testers to ensure the website meets all web standards, is functional and easy to use.
Step 5 Implement and Launch
Once you are happy with every aspect of your new website and we’ve completely tested and found every element to be working as it should, we release the site live.
Step 6 Ongoing Support
Your site is live but our relationship with you doesn’t end there. We offer ongoing support for all our client’s websites. We have staff dedicated to ensuring you are 100% happy with your site and your website meets all your expectations and requirements.
We’ll continue to work with you on any updates or changes you may need, so your website remains current.
This process is as long or as short as the site dictates. Small sites with everything available can move through the design to finished site process in a remarkably short period of time. Rest assured though to get a good result the process cannot be rushed. Websites are an extremely important part of your business marketing and need to be worked through carefully and managed as an ongoing 'live' doorway for your business.
