What is involved in Building a New Website?

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When we start the process of building a new website it always starts with a lot of questions.  A website is not a #2 combo at the burger joint. It does not fit in a box for the shelf at the big box store and it is not one-size-fits-all.  Have you ever met the all that the one-size fits? I have not. We have a list of questions and those usually evolve into more questions specific to the customer.  The customer also has questions ranging from what can we do to how long, how much money, etc.

We start the process with Discovery

Discovery is the process where we discover what the customer is doing and how we can help.  This is the question portion. At the same time, the customer is discovering what we do and how we do it.  The process here is normally short lived. A meeting or two, some emails or calls back and forth as we are rolling.  This process even happens a lot of the time leading up to an actual set of work being planned… so before we even agree on the job this process is started and sometimes almost done.

Then move to Design

Once we have most of the questions answered and agree on the scope of work, we can start the actual design process.  In this we are building out the website itself. We work on making it look good, write the content, edit and place images, etc.  The design process varies from one project to the next, but typically lasts two weeks or less. Sometimes this spans out as we collect more information and that is all good.  We can to take the time necessary to make a good product. When the choice is fast or good, we also choose good. Kinda like that #2 combo vs a rib-eye. You can get fast food, but good food is always preferred.

Work on Development

The development process moves us info testing and building more elaborate features.  For some projects this involves a lot of things, for others not so much. When the site has advanced functionality like e-commerce, event management, or appointment booking these features are dialed in through the development process.

Finish with Deployment

At deployment we have finished the website and testing.  The client has checked and approved the work and now we can reveal it to the public.  At this point we optimize the site and make it publicly accessible. For many this is a quick process but occasionally it can take a couple of days for DNS to resolve and all that jazz.  Either way, we work it out until the site is live for the world.

 

We try to make the process smooth and enjoyable.  If we can help you with a website build, just give us a shout.  We look forward to hearing from you.