Website Development Process Methodology

Our process methodology guides project management from discovery to execution. Beginning with the fundamentals of brand architecture and business strategy, through the creative process, and on to engineering and launch, our methodology enables us to provide consistent quality on all projects.

Approach

1. Discovery. In this first phase of your project, we meet with you to review and analyze existing marketing collateral, including your existing web site if you have one. We will also solicit information about your mission, philosophy, and other information about how your organization functions. We will strive to understand how employees do their jobs, how they interact with each other and with the public, and what systems are currently in place to support them. Our senior programmers will discuss existing data systems in depth with your staff to determine what sort of database structure is required and whether or not an intranet or extranet should be developed to support the public site. We will discuss your overall Internet strategy for the coming year, talk about the pros and cons of the existing web site, and decide how to prioritize the upcoming development process.

2. Parti Development. Once we thoroughly understand your purpose and goals and we've reviewed your existing collateral, we develop a parti that will guide every decision our entire team makes during site development. A "parti" is a structural and stylistic concept that symbolizes your organization's purpose. The parti helps the information designer, copywriter, and graphic designer create and organize content around a set of principles that best embody your organization. This process involves brainstorming concepts, making diagrams, and discussing ideas with you. When we've agreed on the best possible metaphor or symbol, we can begin...

3. Information Design. Now that we have an organizing concept (the parti), we look at the big picture of your site. With your input, we decide the best way to organize all of your content and data so that the site is as intuitive to use as possible. The product of this examination is a storyboard of your site.

Once we've nailed down how people will navigate the site, we then zoom in to examine how your users will interact with the various kinds of data on the site in order to determine the best way to design the database interfaces and their output. The product of this work are sketches of sample layouts of data that we use for the...

4. Prototype Development. Using storyboard and data design from the Information Design phase, we create a non-dynamic prototype of your site to demonstrate how it will navigate and function. The prototype is meant to demonstrate functionality and architecture only, therefore it does not include any graphic design. At this point, it's time for...

5. Client Review & Interim User Testing. At this stage, you can make changes to the information design, database interfaces, the data outputs, the database fields, and any reporting from the databases that you've requested. We highly recommend involving a third party tester who can give you feedback on the user interface.

NOTE: While client review is part of every phase, this is the point after which changes to the scope of the project can have significant effects on budget and schedule. There is usually a period of back and forth, as we tweak the prototype until it is acceptable to you. Once it's approved, we begin...

6. Full-scale Design & Programming. Both graphic design and programming get underway simultaneously, but separately. In this phase, there will be multiple milestone reviews in which we refine the design and programming in a series of iterations. Once we have approved beta design and programming iteration, we can begin

7. Integration. This is when we integrate the graphic design with the database programming. The result of this phase is the working beta version of the site. We populate the database(s) with real data and then begin...

8. Quality Assurance. During this phase, we perform usability & compatibility testing on multiple platforms under a variety of conditions, we check every link on every page, and we proofread the copy. After we train you on your new system, we set you loose to do your own internal testing. We fix all bugs immediately and process any change requests that you submit. Just when you think you can't look at the site one more time, we do a...

9. Final review. We comb through the site one more time to make sure that the bug fixes haven't caused or obscured new bugs. With your approval, the site is ready for...

10. Support, Training, & Documentation. At this point, we train any additional personnel, answer their post-training questions, and post the online site documentation which explains in detail how to maintain and update the site.

11. Launch. If you're hosting with us, we simply point your domain name to our web server to make the site available to the public. If you're hosting elsewhere, we move the site to the new server and instruct the 3rd party server administrator to activate your domain name.

12. Online Marketing. As soon as the site is launched we initiate the search engine registration & promotion process.

13. Continual Site Evaluation. Once your site is up and running successfully, we don't abandon you. We like to meet with you on a regular basis to discuss how well the site is achieving the goals you established and what the next steps are to increase traffic and improve your users' experiences.

14. Growth. Based on users' responses to the site and meetings with you, we execute additional application development and design as needed.