Discovery

The process starts from the initial consultation with the client. During the initial meeting, I try to determine what the client's objectives are for the website. I try to get a understanding of the client's organization, the identity, and target audience. The initial meeting also is the time to find out about any applications the client would like to include in the site such as blogging, social networking, e-commerce, and media.

The major focus of the discovery phase is the users of the website. It's all fine and dandy that the client likes the site, but websites are designed for the user! With this in mind, I try to determine what the user's focus and motivation will be to visit, browse, and re-visit the website. It is therefore important to look at what content will be included and determine the basic overall organization of the site into a logical order to navigate.

During the discovery phase, I also like to look briefly at technological requirements. In this instance, the client wanted to look after the site herself. The finished product was going to need to accomodate her users but also her skill set.

Design

Once the requirements of the site have been determined, I focus my design on making the overall site user-friendly. The idea is to create a design that is appealing to visit, easy to navigate, and keeps people coming back.

How design concepts are created depends on the requirements of the web site. They often start with a rough sketch on paper and sometimes wire-frames, or "grey boxes" are used for initial user testing conducted. Other times I will start by coding some preliminary HTML and CSS which gives me a working mock up that I can easily modify on the fly.

From feedback on user testing, I move onto more elaborate design concepts to flesh out the look and feel of the site. This will usually include creating colour pallets from business cards, if available, and creating customized graphics for the site.

Development

During the Development phase of the process, things really start to come together!

The site navigation solidifies to organize content into a logical flow. The physical layout of the pages is coded and "fleshed" out. It is always a good ideas to include contingencies for additional, fresh content. This fresh content has the added bonus of keeping the site ranked highly in search engines, such as Google.

Websites are built using validated code as per the W3C and with accessibility and cross browser compatibility in mind. I do not try to pixel perfection in all browsers as standards are not universally supported; however, I do create websites so they degrade gracefully for the older browsers.

User testing continues through the development process to ensure an effective end product. This is done so that a change to the framework of the site can be made in a timely fashion.

Once the site is complete, final testing and quality control of the site is conducted to ensure that the site functions properly.

Delivery

Once all the bugs are out the system, it's time to hand over the reins, as it were!

Depending on the client's needs, I will continue to maintain the site on an as-needed-basis or provide the client with "hands-on" instruction on how to use the site as well as reference material specific to the site.

If you are looking for a website but aren't sure where to begin, let my questionnaire help get you started.