Your company’s website is frequently the first impression you make to potential customers. Not only must you make an exceptional first impression with your website’s design but you need a strategy to convert visitors into clients, sales, or long-term customers. Flashy layouts may look great, but are useless if your website’s visitors can’t find what they are looking for. Striking a balance between website design and website content then combining that with an effective marketing strategy will make you site compelling to visitors and search engines.
Digital Laminate develops websites using our D4 Process: Define, Design, Development, and Deliver. This process transforms ideas from concept and brings them to reality while removing the uncertainties of cost and timelines.
Define
In order to have a successful project we must gain a thorough understanding of our clients objectives. We begin by working through a series of questions:
- What is the purpose of your site?
- Who is your target audience?
- What content does your audience expect to find?
- What is your online internet presence?
- Who is your online competition and what are they doing?
- How will your site be marketed?
- What is your timeline for completion?
Once the objectives are defined we provide clients with:
- Site map that details the structure of your site or application
- Project timeline
- List of client expectations
- Project budget plan that leaves out the guess work.
Design
After collecting and compiling the initial requirements, we draft several sample page layouts for client consideration. Depending on the complexity of the project these samples may start as simple wireframes and progress to complete visual mock-ups.
Development
This is where the preverbal rubber meets the road. We take the comprehensive website design specifications and transform them into code using technical applications. We also use a web based project management system that allows clients to securely check the progress our their project. Clients can also collaborate with us by uploading images, making comments, and reviewing process decisions. The Development phase also includes:
- Domain acquisition and setup
- Web server or hosting account setup
- SSL acquisition setup (as appropriate)
- Email hosting and/or MS Exchange server setup
- Database(s) setup
- Site coding
- Site tagging (meta, alt, micro formats)
- Copywriting
- Google Analytics integration
- Rich media application (RMA) development such as Flash & Flex.
- Internal quality assurance reviews and testing
- Client reviews
Deliver
At this phase the site is ready to go live. Any training that needs to occur we be completed at this time. We also educate clients about their analytics reports and it’s associated key performance indicators (KPI).
