Our Process

Every project starts with a first meeting, setting expectations and communicating needs.

Our goal, besides getting to know each other a bit, is to find what kind of project we are discussing. To inform the overall theme and brand we’re trying to convey, we’ll discuss the goals of your business and what sets you apart; to get a sense of the scope of work necessary for your project, we will cover the upcoming steps in the process.

After the first meeting, we’ll hammer down the details and agree to terms. Finally, we’ll kick it all in motion, starting with content.

“Content is king,” they say, and it’s true: Content is what keeps visitors engaged and gets them to choose your product instead of a competitor’s. It is, in a sense, everything that fills out your website and makes it worthwhile to visit.

First we must define a site architecture, starting with the key determination of how large you expect your website to be. This can be expressed by the number of subpages, or pages besides the homepage, that are needed. What pages might you want? Perhaps an “About” page? Separate practice areas or product pages? A custom contact page? How about a blog?

There are many ways we can produce the content itself. Sometimes clients will migrate content from an old website or other promotional materials. Often we are hired to produce thorough, search-engine-friendly content based on our talks with you and on competitive analysis.

Of course, you can also write the content yourself! WordPress is an ideal tool for the industrious website owner to truly own their content.

How your website will look and how users will interact with it are crucial decisions that we’ll make at this key stage of the project. This phase, along with content production, determine nearly everything a visitor will experience when they visit your domain name. No pressure, right?

“Design” is a term that can mean many things, but what we’re looking for is an overall appearance proper for your brand. Typically, we handle the design phase in one of two ways: with the creation of a custom design or with selection of a templated one.

Custom designs are just that: Custom. We will carefully craft a layout for your business that you can have a large role in shaping. Templated designs are more rigid, but less expensive to produce and faster to reach production. We use resources like ThemeForest to pick out a pre-designed theme and then build your content into it. Templated designs allow for some level of customization as well, but it is more adjustment than it is new creation. Indeed, projects sometimes fall in the middle of a “custom” and “template” variety.

Now that we have laid the framework for what your website will be, we enter the phase of actually building it.

Website development is an art and science that turns HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and other geeky acronyms into a functional product. Naturally, it takes some time to achieve. We pride ourselves on doing WordPress right, and that means coding with care and responsibility rather than cutting corners.

We will check in with status updates as we go, asking for clarification or feedback as needed. It is important that the “grand reveal” of the project does not come when the whole thing is complete. We prefer your involvement every step of the way.

Eventually, development efforts take shape into a near-final product. While we know you’ll be happy with the results, we take the additional step of asking for your thorough review of the website for functionality, content errors, and anything we may have missed. We’re human, after all, and expectations can change!

We also encourage the exploration of additional features and website services at this stage. For maximum launch day impact, we would rather have the everything in place now!

Feedback reviewed, we will iterate on our work, resolving any and all noted issues. In the end, we’re left with a polished product that is just waiting to be shown off.

The last step of the process is our personal favorite. Launch time – not to be confused with lunch time (also a good time) – is the rewarding, exciting moment we have been working towards.

To make your domain name point to the website we have built, we’ll need access to your domain registrar (GoDaddy, NameCheap, etc.). Typically the launch process takes no more than a few hours to set the switches and test that everything is running as expected.

Congratulations! You now own your own slice of the magical realm we call the Internet. Your website can be shared, and the benefits realized. Go ahead, add that domain name to your social media accounts and business cards. It’s time to get out there and bring the boom!