Our Website Design & Development Process
Consultation/Research
During the first phase of the project, we spend some time getting to know your business and who your target audience is. We work with you and your team to find out what sort of online presence you’re looking for and what type of website will work best for your company. Do you need a basic, informational website with a blog that will allow you to express ideas and concepts to the public, a custom ecommerce solution with which to sell your products and services, or something in between? We ask you to provide some examples of websites that you like and what features you like about them to get an idea of what your preferences are. We help you choose a color scheme if you don’t already have one, determine how many sections and pages the site will contain, decide how the navigation will work, and establish what server side technologies will be required if any. During this phase, we also work with you to create a list of key phrases to be used for search engine optimization (SEO). These are phrases your target audience would enter into a Google search to find a company like yours. They will be used to create the titles and descriptions for each page of your site and later as the basis for our SEO work with your content. This phase can take anywhere from one to three weeks depending on the complexity of your business.
Design/Layout
“How will this be perceived by the end user?” This is a question we always keep in mind during the design/layout phase. It’s time to take what we’ve learned about your business along with all the input you’ve given us plus our years of experience and create one or two basic templates from which all site pages will be derived. We touch base with you at various points and make revisions along the way based on your feedback. Because the basic templates are the foundation for the entire site, getting them right here is critical. When we both agree it’s ready, we move on to the next phase. Design/Layout can take from three to six weeks depending on what type of site is being created.
Build/Develop
Now we’re ready to flesh out the rest of the site. Taking all the information we’ve gathered so far plus the content and images you’ve provided, we create the balance of the site based on the templates built in the previous phase. Once the site is complete, we test it thoroughly to be sure all content and functionality in place. Once we’re satisfied, we send you a URL that you can use to test the site yourself. Once we’re both satisfied it’s ready to go, it’s launch time. The development phase can take from four to six weeks depending on the complexity of the site and the total amount of material to be added. A more or less static, information-only type of site will be finished faster than an eCommerce site with online ordering.
Launch and Get Found
At this point, all parts of the site are moved to a live server so it’s accessible to the world! However even though your site is now live, it’s not very “visible” yet. That’s why we highly recommend that you take advantage of our Local Search Marketing service.
Basic Listings
With our Basic Listings, we make sure your company is listed in nearly 60 of the biggest, most popular search engines, directories, and mobile sites on the internet. Your information may already be in some of these sites, but it may not all be correct. Basic Listings will fix incorrect information if it exists, create listings where none exist, and lock them all down to keep everything accurate and consistent. Unlike some local marketing companies that put only your company name, address, and phone into a handfull of directories, our service puts additional content like an extended business description, photos, videos (if you have any), business hours, additional phone numbers, payment methods you accept, an email link, and a link to your website. Our clients also get a unique 50 character promo field that can be linked to any web page you want and updated in real time.
Premiere Listings
Our Premiere Listings add additional rich content like product and service listings (with pricing), staff bios, menus, and event calendars. It also adds Review Monitoring, which notifies you anytime someone writes a review of your business on any of the nearly 60 sites that are monitored. Premiere Listings also sends the Basic Listing content above to virtually all the rest of the search engines, directories, and mobile sites out there.