How Does the Journey Begin? What's Involved?
The Brief
Deciding to have a new website is great! However, to build the website that has the right parts and pieces, I'll need to ask a lot of questions.
Why? Simply, when I know what is important to you and what you want to achieve, our journey will be in the right direction and include the pieces that take us closer to your target both in purpose and investment.
Will it seem like I'm asking a lot of questions? Yes, it will. It will help if you have given some thought about what your goals are beyond make it pretty or do whatever. In fact, it may feel a little awkward, but I want to make sure we are on the same page.
The Sitemap
Good news, once I have all the info I need, I'll prepare a visual sitemap. This will help us to literally be on the same page quickly about what we are working to communicate and find the best way to structure the info. Some call the structure "chunking" where if we have too much info, how are we going to make it easy for your visitors to find what is important to them.
If we have a plan and too little info at the start, this will help us know what work is ahead.
The Prototype
Instead of sketching or verbally describing what I intend to build with a bunch of tech jargon, I'll build a prototype that is interactive in the browser to show how my solution will work.
Keep in mind, this stage is about where we expect to put the parts together and no attention is given to design at this point. Mind you, it is not pretty, but it moves us closer more quickly.
The Design
Now we get to incorporate color, branding, and bring interest, accents colors and a certain life to your website design. The plan is to bring your brand or style into the interactive prototype.
The Delivery
It may seem that I crawl into a cave for a couple of weeks. Actually, I firmly plant my nose to the grindstone and am creating the functionality, interactivity, and features that are designed to reach the goals and serve the purpose(s) we discussed earlier.
Although the design phase may feel like we are close, it takes extra effort to make sure everything works and tested before deploying your brand spanking new website. We may even want to plan a bit of a launch party as part of your website reveal.