Our Website Design Process

Every website we build is different, with it's own unique challenges.  

 

Over our 24+ years in the industry, we have developed a robust process for building websites. It is the consistency of our processes that enable us to deliver consistently valuable outcomes for our clients.  

While we tweak and customise this process to suit each individual build, it generally follows the structure below.

Discovery Phase

We listen to the challenges our clients face with their website and their current online presence.  We listen to their business goals, find out where they are with their business and where they want to get to.  Our experience means we ask the right questions to best understand our clients business objectives and priorities.

We analyse and drill down into the challenges faced by our clients in their current website design, and in the objectives for their new website.

We develop a digital design strategy to meet our clients business objectives.  We develop specifications and page structure for a website to deliver the strategy, and define the website’s conversion mechanism.

We gather content to use in the project.  This may include, but is not limited to:

  • Existing written content or photos from their current website or other sources.
  • Business and industry logos
  • Information on new business products or services.
  • Interviews with business stakeholders.
  • Business questionnaires
  • On location photography or video sessions
  • Design cues from websites that are considered leaders or best practice in our clients industry.

Concept Phase

We build an inspiration board, which includes design elements and style guide to use when creating our designs.  This may include:

  • Fonts
  • Colour pallette
  • Patterns
  • Logos
  • Website Design Elements

We create wireframe designs for the website, which are simple, style-free ‘block’ designs.  They allow us to ensure each page has the required elements, and they are in the correct order.  Often we will workshop and explore multiple wireframe designs for a single page to ensure we end up with the best design to achieve the objectives.

Our copywriters write the written content for the website, based on the business objectives and website’s conversion mechnism.

We work collaboratively with our client in revising the wireframe designs and copywriting to ensure they’re the best options to achieve the client’s objectives.

Design Phase

We design the website’s pages for multiple devices.  We regularly explore and workshop multiple design options for individual pages so that we end up with the best possible design for the clients goals and objectives.

We work collaboratively with our client in revising and changing elements of the page designs and choosing the best design option to move forward with.

Development Phase

We implement the WordPress technical framework and plugins to deliver the required website specifications that will achieve the client’s goals.

We build each page in the draft website.  Occasionally we may build multiple versions of the first draft to enable us to workshop with the client to decide which is the best design option to move forward with.

A fully working first draft of the website is ready for review.

Working collaboratively with our client, we revise the first draft, making changes as necessary, with a view to finalising the design.

We comprehensively test the functionality of the website, ensuring it meets the specifications defined to achieve the objectives.

We test website analytics to ensure all the required tracking is in place, and then test the website speed and mobile friendliness.

Finally we test the display and functionality of the site across different devices.

We implement fixes from any issues discovered in testing, then present the final version of the website as the final draft for approval to be deployed.

Any final changes required are made to the website befiore it is approved for deployment.

Deployment Phase

The website is deployed, and tested in it’s live state.  Post deployment setup actions are performed, and the website is continually monitored for any issues.

Once the website has passed it’s live tests and been monitored without issues, we sign off on the project.

Support Phase

Once the project is signed off, we start our support period where we offer support to the client in using their new website.

Every website project comes with a warranty period where we guarantee the website to work as intended, and remedy any issues that may arise.

Maintenance Phase

Once the website is live, we commence ongoing security monitoring to identify any plugin or core vulnerabilities that could lead to security incidents.

We implement an ongoing program of actioning any security vulnerabilities that have been identified by performing required plugin and core updates, including testing of updates performed.