Below is the overall break-down of work for a web design project. To make it simple, I always compare the process of building a website with building a house: [1] uncovering your needs and wants such as whether you want one or two stories, 3 or 4 bedrooms, an entertainment area, a big back yard or a pool…; [2] drawing the layout to turn [random, organized or unorganized] ideas into diagrams; [3] starting the construction by follwing the drawn layout and standard methods; [4] finishing; [5] maintaining
- Project Analysis: uncovering and understanding your business, your clients/target audience, and your competitors; establishing the goals/objectives for the web design project; researching keywords / key phrases used for the text content; identifying the number of pages and content you should have on the site.
- Web Design: creating the wireframe/site architecture of your website; designing the graphic mock-up of your home page and a secondary page if your secondary pages have a different layout from the home page. All is done in light of the previously completed analysis. There’s no coding involved so far. The final product after this stage will be an image of your web page which will be identical to the your actual finished website.
- Web Development/Construction: developing/coding HTML/CSS mock-up from the graphic mock-up previously designed; testing download speeds and browser compatibilities; developing/coding the whole site and developing backend database if needed while optimizing content for search engines; testing everything again including emails, forms, database, and browser compatibilities.
- Launching: Bringing the new website live; submitting the site to major search engines and possibly other online directories; keeping track of and analysing the site traffic to make timely adjustments if necessary. There may be two launching phases depending on how big and complicated your website is: soft launch – bringing everything live but not yet announcing it to the public; hard launch – announcing your newly designed/re-designed website through an email blast, letting your social network know about the site through your blog, adding your new website address to your business cards and other sales/business literatures…
- Maintaining: We provide this service per your request. In addition to making text, graphic or other technical update for the website, we also give you a periodical performance report which summarizes your site ranking in major search engines, your keywords, key terms performance, your website traffic and visitor information… From this report, we can make additional adjustments so as to further improve your ranking in major search engines.