Methodology

The following steps are very important in the web site design and development process. From gathering initial information, to the creation of your web site, and finally to maintenance to keep your web site up to date and current are key to have a successful web site.

Step 1: Information Gathering & Client Needs Assessment

The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information and find out what exactly client’s needs are. Many things need to be taken into consideration when the look and feel of your site is created.

This first step is actually the most important one, as it involves a solid understanding of the company it is created for. It involves a good understanding of the client – what the client’s business goals and dreams are, and how the web can be utilized to help client achieve those goals.

For this purpose we ask many questions to our client to find out and understand your business and your needs in a web site.

Certain things to consider are:

• Purpose
  • What is the purpose of the web site that client like to develop?
  • Do you want to provide information, promote a service, sell a product…etc?
• Goals
  • What do you hope to accomplish by building this web site?
  • Two of the more common goals are either to make money or share information, sell products?
• Target Audience
  • Is there a specific group of people that will help you reach your goals?
  • It is helpful to picture the “ideal” person you want to visit your web site. Consider their age, gender or area of interests – this will later help determine the best design style for your site.
• Content
  • What kind of information will the target audience be looking for on your site?
  • Are they looking for specific information, a particular product or service, online product sales, ordering…?

Step 2: Planing

Using the information gathered from phase 1, it is time to put together a plan for the client’s web site. This is the point where a site map is developed.

The site map is a list of all main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics, if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on the site, and is essential to developing a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. The end-user of the web site – aka your customer – must be kept in mind when designing your site. These are, after all, the people who will be learning about your service or buying your product. A good user interface creates an easy to navigate web site, and is the basis for this.

During the planning stage, your web designer will also help you decide what technologies should be implemented. Elements such as interactive forms, ecommerce, flash, etc. are discussed when planning your web site.

Step 3: Design

Drawing from the information gathered up to this point, it’s time to determine the look and feel of your site.

Target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration. A site aimed at sports media, for example, will look much different than one meant for a financial institution. As part of the design phase, it is also important to incorporate elements such as the company logo or colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site.

Our web designer will create one or more prototype designs for your web site. This is typically a .jpg image of what the final design will look like. Often times you will be sent an email with the mock-ups for your web site, while other designers take it a step further by giving you access to a secure area of their web site meant for customers to view work in progress.

The development team will allow you to view your project throughout the design and development stages. The most important reason for this is that it gives you the opportunity to express your likes and dislikes on the site design.

In this stage, communication between client and development team is crucial to ensure that the final web site will match client’s needs and taste. Then development can begin…

Step 4: Development

The developmental stage is the point where the web site itself is created. At this time, our web designer team will take all of the individual graphic elements from the prototype and use them to create the actual, functional site.

This is typically done by first developing the home page, followed by a “shell” for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web site. Once the shell has been created, our team will take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the appropriate areas.

Elements such as interactive contact forms, flash animations or ecommerce shopping carts are implemented and made functional during this phase, as well.

This entire time, our web designer will continue to make your in-progress web site available to you for viewing, so that you can suggest any additional changes or corrections you would like to have done.

On the technical front, a successful web site requires an understanding of front-end web development. This involves writing valid XHTML / CSS code that complies to current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible. This is tested in the next phase…

Step 5: Testing and Delivery

At this point, our team will attend to the final details and test your web site. They will test things such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, as well last testing for last minute compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers), ensuring that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser versions.

Once client give our web designer final approval, it is time to deliver the site. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program is used to upload the web site files to client server. WDCLOGICS also offers domain name registration and web hosting services as well. Once these accounts have been setup, and your web site uploaded to the server, the site should be put through one last run-through. This is just precautionary, to confirm that all files have been uploaded correctly, and that the site continues to be fully functional.

This marks the official launch of client’s site, as it is now viewable to the public.

Step 6: Maintenance & Promotion

The development of your web site is not necessarily over, though. One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to offer new content or products on a regular basis. Our team will be more than happy to continue working together with client, to update the information on their web site. We also offer maintenance packages at reduced rates, based on how often you anticipate making changes or additions to your web site.

If a client prefers to be more hands on, and update their own content, there is something called a CMS (Content Management System) that can be implemented to their web site. This is something that would be decided upon during the Planning stage. With a CMS, your designer will utilize online software to develop a database driven site for the client.

A web site driven by a CMS gives the client the ability to edit the content areas of the web site themselves. They will be given access to a back-end administrative area, where they can use an online text editor (similar to a mini version of Microsoft Word). The client will be able to edit existing content this way. The possibilities are endless!

Other maintenance type items include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SES (Search Engine Submission). This is the optimization of you web site with elements such as title, description and keyword tags which help your web site achieve higher rankings in the search engines. The previously mentioned code validation is something that plays a vital role in SEO, as well.

There are a lot of details involved in optimizing and submitting your web site to the search engines – enough to warrant it’s own post. This is a very important step, because even though you now have a web site, you need to make sure that people can find it!