Make a great website is a little bit art, a little bit science – and 100% process.
If you and your web team don’t execute the right tasks in the right order – and reach smart, well thought out decisions at each step along the way – then there is an excellent chance your site will neither look nor function the way you hoped or expected.
You can’t just step back and hope things will work themselves out.
That’s why IT Expert Solutions has built a rock solid process for crystallizing your objectives; developing a website experience strategy and visual identity; and then building and marketing the site.
Discovery and Analysis
The first step in any web design and development process is to figure out what we’re doing. That really means understanding the business purpose of the site and the needs of the site users. It also requires looking at the competition and understanding best practices and performance benchmarks in the category.
The way we do that is to speak with key individuals in your company – say, your marketing person, your head of IT, your CEO (yes, we know, all three may be the same person – you). It’s also great when we can speak directly with your target users, to better understand what they’re trying to do relevant to a site such as yours. Pretty soon, we’ve amassed a ton of information. |
Site Architecture and Functional Requirements
Now that we’ve gotten our input and had our discussions, it’s time to design your site – on paper. Just like an architect building a house, we plan everything schematically first before we commit to building it. This not only saves money in the process by ensuring that what we create makes sense but it also provides the appropriate forum for our design team to collaborate with you on an ongoing basis.
The initial deliverables we review together at are the site information architecture and functional requirements. The first is a sort of flowchart that describes how the site content is organized – what links to what – and how users will find what they want. The second – the functional requirements – is a summary of the main things a user will be able to do, for example: search for products; add items to cart and purchase; create a “my account” page, etc.
Once you’ve had your input into the information architecture and functional requirements, those become our blueprint for building the site. In fact, we just need one more thing …
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Wireframe Example |
Design Integrated in Wireframe |
Dynamic Website Flow |
Authentication System |
Property Website Wireframe |
Site Design
What is your site going to look like? What are the colours, images, graphics, animations, and so on? To create that look and feel, we’re going to take everything we know about your business, your customers, the category and the competition and figure out a design that accurately reflects who you are and what you do. In fact, chances are we’ll show you several design ideas so can feel confident you’ve chosen the look and feel that’s right for you. |
Site Build and Application Development
Once we’ve settled on a design, it’s time to start building. Simply put, that means taking your content and incorporating it into the approved design, then turning those pages into HTML. In addition, we create and integrate any applications that may be relevant to your site – for example, product catalogue; store and shopping cart functionality; and account management.
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Testing and Quality Assurance
We test everything we do as we go along, to make sure it’s performing as intended. Then, when the site is fully built and staged on our development server, we QA it some more.
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Deployment
Finally, the big day is here: Time to go live on the Internet. Congratulations all around on a fine job!
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Ongoing Marketing, Maintenance and Performance Evaluation
Wait, did we say we were done? Well, not completely. First off, your site needs to be marketed. Optimizing it for search engines is just the beginning of that. Then, your site needs to be maintained – updated with new content and new features. And finally, site performance should be evaluated regularly. What content is attracting visitors and which isn’t? Do certain pages or applications need to be tweaked to improve their usability? We make sure your site continues to get better and better over time. |
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