What's Involved in developing your new site?

The first thing that happens when I get an enquiry is I send the potential client a website planner. The website planner, a series of questions I have listed in a Word document, that will gather requirements for the project.

The key objectives of the website planner:

• * Find out who the client is and what they do
• * Who their target market/user is
• * Who their competition is
• * What deliverables they want from me
• * Timeframe and budget

In a nutshell, a makeover with a modern & easy to use interface. I am responsible for the XHTML/CSS (coding the entire site)

Research & Ideas

I start by going through the current website and list things that can be improved.

Ideas

I suggest several improvements that can be made to the current site, showcase various features of other non-related sites that I feel can be integrated into the new site.

Logo

Depending on the project new branding may be necessary including logo, stationary, company image and the website.

Information Architecture

I should mention here that at each stage I get feedback from the client and discuss it. It’s important to make sure they’re involved the whole way through the process.

Wire frames.

I start by sketching wire frames. and then move onto Illustrator to produce more professional looking wire frames. that I can pass onto the client and depending on the project I could produce 1, 2 or 3 wire frames.

Mockups

Once the client is happy with the wire frames. it is time to open Photoshop and start with a fresh canvas. The good thing about this process is that I now have a wire frame to build the design over.

Homepage mockup

All good to go, the front end development process starts and I produce templates for:

• * Homepage
• * About Us
• * Pricing
• * Sign Up

I also produce a template that has various other styled elements to use if need be, which includes tables, forms, buttons, alerts etc.

Testing

Each site goes through extensive testing by myself and the client to ensure full functionality of the site that includes web compliance, link testing, and cross browser compatibility.

Completion

The project is complete and the website is then passed onto the client