Step 1. Information Gathering

The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. Many things need to be taken into consideration when the look and feel of your site is created.

This step is to understand what your business goals and dreams are, and how the web can be utilized to help you achieve those goals.

It is important that we start by asking a lot of questions to help us understand your business and your needs in a web site.

 

Things to Consider

Vision
What is the purpose of the web site? Do you want to provide information, promote a service, sell a product or have more of a brochure type of site?

Goals
What do you hope to accomplish by building this web site? We will review short-term and long-term goals.

Target Audience
Who is the audience for your website?  Is it a niche group of people or a broader consumer reach or is it business-to-business? ?  And, do you have multiple types of customers or audience types or just one?

Content
What kind of information will the target audience be looking for on your site? Are they looking for specific information, news, articles, resources, a particular product or service, online ordering or otherwise?

Reference Sites

A list of links for competitors, partners and industry watch groups or associations helps in understanding the tone and aura of a market.

Existing Materials

A review of current materials provides a baseline for understanding the company, group or individual and current positioning. Items like: website, logo or branding completed, brochures, company / product presentations, or anything related are beneficial

Design Preferences

Any examples of other company websites or brochures from any industry that you like as examples around colors, layouts, simplicity or details, etc.

Content Management

What level of content management would you like to have?? Do you prefer to update the site yourself or will you have someone manage it for you? What type of content would you like to be able to update – such as news, events, blogs? Will you require training for these and/or tutorials?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Is ranking in Google important to you?

Google Analytics

Do you want to access statistics around visitors to your website?

Budget

What is your budget? Depending on budget and timeframe, your goals can also be realized in manageable phases.

Plan Launch Date

Discuss timing for website planning, content and going live.

Step 2. Strategy & Planning

Using the information gathered from Step 1, it is time to put together a strategy and a plan to see it come to life:

  • Document and summarize findings from information gathering
  • Recommend a strategy to realize the project goals
  • Explain and validate the strategy with you
  • Develop a plan to implement the strategy with a set of tools
  • Create a timeline for deliverables
  • Develop a site structure: a site map (list of web sections and pages) that takes site navigation and ease-of-use into consideration. List of functionalities by page such as interactive forms, ecommerce, newsletter, e-brochure, etc.
  • Discuss Home page strategy: list out the top 5-10 things you want people to have access to, read, see or feel when they come to your home page (this is the gateway into your site) – it could be around images, graphics, text, links, partners, video, buttons or calls-to-action, etc.

Step 3. Website Design

In this step, we will ensure that that the final web site will match your needs and tastes. We will:

  • Develop the look and feel based on the 2 previous steps. For example, target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration for the look and feel.
  • Propose one or more Website WordPress Templates
  • Communicate with you to choose one that responds best to your needs, and goals.
  • Develop Home page content: the home page is very important in communicating to different audiences and presenting your company

Why WordPress?

From its origin as a blogging platform, WordPress has grown to become one of the most widely used website development platform and CMS (Content Management System) chosen by a majority of website builders. It is both flexible and powerful. The WordPress community is literally exploding with the development of plugins that add functionality to a website, such as a calendar or ecommerce. Here are a few of its advantages:

  • Rapid development using open source software
  • A large number of high-quality templates to choose from with strong features
  • Expandable and adaptable environment to grow with your business
  • SEO-friendly
  • Easy access to a global community of consultants and developers
  • Easy to add functionality with plugins instead of writing new code every time
  • A built-in CMS (content management system) with lots of free online tutorials

What is a WordPress Template?

A WordPress template is a set of tools that brings design style and functionality to a website. The choice of the template will be guided by the look and feel we would like to achieve as well as nature of the industry you are in and the functionalities that we want in the website. Once chosen, the template will be customized in the next phase to reflect your branding. Key criteria in choosing a template:

  • Well coded and supported – you can ask questions and have potential problems fixed in a short amount of time through a support system
  • It includes, or is compatible with, the functionalities that we want for the project
  • The design is in the direction we are aiming for

Step 4. Website Content Development

Following the established strategy and plan, we will develop the content with you: key messages, text, images, and multimedia.

Writing for the web is different from writing for printed publications. We can help you to adapt your content to the web, develop it for you, or we can provide you with guidelines in content development.

  • Content Plan: Develop plan for text (copy), photos, logos and other content
  • Develop Copy: Create and/or edit and proofread
  • Photos: Either you provide the photos for the website that can fit the desired look and feel or we will suggest photos for you to buy at a reasonable cost (usually between $15 to $65 per photo)
  • Diagrams and infographics: Develop required images
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Write keywords, descriptions, page titles and other relevant information

Step 5. Website Coding Development

Coding Development involves writing valid XHTML / CSS / PHP code that complies with current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible, on all devices. We will make sure that your website is beautiful on the web, phone and tablet. Good coding is also very important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Along with WordPress, we will use many different technologies to build your site:

  • XHTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Databases
  • WordPress plugins: that add needed functionalities to a website such as a calendar or subscription to a newsletter

The developmental stage is the point where the web site itself is created. We will do:

  • WordPress installation
  • Template installation
  • Template Customization
  • Functionality development
  • SEO: Write and insert meta tags for SEO, use best practices for naming of files to use keywords
  • Content integration

We will use a staging area to develop the website before launching it (meaning it is not viewable to the general public). The in-progress web site will be available to you for viewing, so that you can suggest any additional changes or corrections you would like to have done.

Step 6. Testing and Delivery

We believe this step is most successful when we are doing it in partnership with you. We want to make sure that:

  • The site meets the goals set out in steps one and two, for content and design.
  • The technical features (XHTML, CSS, scripts, and so on) work correctly.  We will run the entire site through a coding validator.
  • The design works in significant browsers and on different mobile devices such as phones and tablets – we validate the website on current versions of primary browsers and operating systems.
  • Test functionalities such as interactive forms or newsletter subscription

Post-Production

  • Our QA: we will review the site in full and test links, read text and look over each page for a last check
  • Your Review: the website is released to you for your final review
  • Tweaks and Testing: respond to any last feedback and do final tweaks and one last round of testing
  • Launch: Web site goes LIVE
  • Training: any post-launch training or documentation delivered to the client, as planned

Step 7.  Maintenance and Content Updates

Once web site development is complete, it’s time to shift into maintenance and update mode. Remember, one way to bring repeat visitors to your site and stay relevant in the search engines is to offer new content or products on a regular basis.

It’s really up to you as to how comfortable you feel in updating your own web site. Some people prefer to have all the control so that they can make updates to their own web site the minute they decide to do so. Others prefer to hand off the web site entirely, as they have enough tasks on-hand that are more important for them to handle directly. Often a middle point is the best, for example you can post news and we can help you with other bigger changes in content or graphics.

 

We can offer help in 3 areas: (click to see descriptions)

1. Technical maintenance

This ensures your website is up to date and running smoothly. The website has different components from a front-end to back-end perspective: hosting server, WordPress, WordPress template and plugins (add different functionalities to your website like event calendars and more)

Examples of maintenance:

  • Updates of WordPress, template and plugins
  • Setup of automatic Cloud Backups
  • Unexpected technical problems with hosting servers
  • Link Checker plugins: this regular checkup ensures that no links are broken in the website. Sometimes an external link becomes non-functional and need to be updated.

2. Adding/changing functionalities and/or pages

Examples:

  • Change in the menu
  • Adding a page
  • Adding a calendar of Events

3. Content updates

Some content updates require you to really know WordPress. For example, most users learn how to post news and posts on blogs, but not how to change complex page content. To have a beautifully designed website means to compromise a little on the level of simplicity to change content, and some pages, such as the Home page, are more complex.

Examples of support for content updates:

  • Video-conference training consultation
  • Questions
  • Content updates for complex page

If you wish to learn WordPress, here is a good starting point WordPress tutorial.

Step 8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Google uses a complex algorithm to determine the order of search results when someone is typing a keyword. It will use these factors to determine the order:

  • Domain age: Google tends to give some ranking preference to websites that have been online for a number of years.
  • The first thing the Googlebot looks at is the actual content of your pages. By reviewing the titles, descriptions, headings and many other factors on your pages, the Googlebot can accurately determine what your site is about. You also get well ranked if you have high quality and well organized content.
  • The pertinence of your website relative to the keywords a person typed in Google.
  • Googlebot also examines the number and type of other websites that link to your webpage (called backlinks). The idea behind this is that if a lot of high quality websites are linking to yours, then you must be delivering valuable content. On top of that, if the linking website is a recognized “Authority” by Google, such as a Government or Education website, you have more points.
  • Being subscribed to paid or free directories such as Yahoo and DMOZ directories also give you good ranking points.
  • A very important factor is to know the competition – if the competition for a keyword is very good for everyone and most competitors use it, it will be difficult to beat them in ranking higher. That is why choosing the right keywords is very important.
  • Google keep changing its search algorithm, and the competition changes too – you need to regularly revise your strategy to stay relevant and on top.

Choosing the Right Keywords

A good keyword has the following characteristics:

  • Enough people that you would like as an audience are actually typing that keyword in Google.
  • The competition for that keyword is not too strong, you want to choose a battle you can win.
  • You are willing to put that keyword as a page title and use it in your content.

On top of basic good practices in your website development, we can:

  • Install a SEO plugin that automatically submits your website to search engines each time it is updated.
  • Find the best keywords for your website.
  • Integrate the keywords to the website content and Meta-tags.

We do not offer complete SEO services, such as those offers by specialized companies that will track your position every month and try to improve it – those services range from $300 to $5000 by month; they includes a whole range of services, such as audience research and analytics, link strategy with manual submission to directories (to increase backlinks), etc. (ref: http://www.theseoservices.ca/how-we-do-it/  )

 

IMPORTANT: Although best practices will be utilized, it is never a guarantee that you will be well ranked in Google.  It takes time and several months to see if SEO changes are taking effect.

Other Services

Link Checkers Plugin

This is a plugin that periodically checks if any internal or external links are broken. If a link is found broken, we need find a solution:

  • The link address could have changed and needs to be updated.
  • The link may not exist anymore and need to be deleted.
  • Sometimes the website referred by the link is simply temporarily down.

Backups in the Cloud

This plugin periodically backs up your content to another server. If your hosting server experiences problems or if anything happens to your website, you will have a backup.

Google Analytics

We can setup a Google analytics account for you to receive periodic reports on website traffic to your website. Statistics are an important tool to understand what the interests are of your audience.

Other Needs

We can support you in a range of other related needs. These are covered by our hourly support:

  • Hosting setup
  • Email setup in the hosting server (we do not offer client email setup)
  • Design of email signature
  • Domains (buy, transfer or setup)

 

NOTE: services for email or website can go down when we do changes such as a transfer of hosting.

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