I need a mm-hmph-mmm,
but what do I do?
Good question, and a great place to start. The first step is acceptance! True, there are quite a few stages in getting from "I think I need a ~mrph" to "I have a ~whnt-waa that does everything I want and need it to do." But the good news is that there's no mystery to it and most, if not all of the first stage you can do on your own, before ever talking to a designer or developer.
Zoom out a bit and consider this... On a macro-scale, what are the reasons you (or your company) feel that the time has come to build a new or replace an old site or application? What do you want to achieve by having a website? Are you selling, informing, both?
Right then, zoom in to a more micro-scale and ask yourself... what features do you think will help achieve those goals? You don't have to know the technical possibilities or terms here, just think without limitations. Have you seen other sites or apps that have features you might need or want?
Onto the more detailed... what information do you want to post on the site? What do you want to say? At this stage of course, it would be rare to have the final content that you want to publish, but it helps to have a good idea of where you want to go.
oo00! Talking to a developer is so s-s-cary.
Yeah, doesn't need to be though. I talk to myself all the time and it's not that bad. First off, it's not your job to know the technical details, nor the jargon - If you do, well, that's great (unless you know just enough to make you slightly dangerous), but it is not necessary. A good designer, developer will ::
- Inform and educate you as to the possibilities and costs of the features you need and want.
- Discuss and suggest functionalities that are better, faster, you may not be aware of, or may be more cost-effective.
- Discuss your options and plans for expansion and ensure that rebuilding is minimised or eliminated.
- Discuss your content update options. That is, how do you update the text, pictures, music, videos, etc?
Most important, they should never, never try to sell you anything you don't need. We don't have any sales people at swingin'sam.designs. We simply remove the confusion and help you to intelligently decide what you want to do and understand why you are doing it.
The biggest task we perform in the initial phase is listening and trying to get into your 'head space'. After all, it's your site, not ours, and you are the one who needs to be happy with it. That being said however, there is one rule that we do not necessarily follow at swingin'sam.designs.
The customer is always right? Well, mmm... no that's not necessarily true. Having a Yes-Yes around might eventually get the job done, but it won't get the job done right and it won't make you stand out from the crowd.
Geez, that seems harsh, why say that? Well, the point is that we're not here to watch you possibly make bad decisions simply to make our job bigger. Rather, we're going to tell you why it's bad practice and suggest something better or, perhaps, suggest it be removed completely. In the end, if you are dead-set on polka-dots, well, we can discuss it.
The Design Process
And so we begin. You can sit back a little and let us do some design work. During the design phase, we take everything we talked about and make it all into tangible design layouts. We do not charge extra for this stage, there are no surprise fees, it is all part of coming up with a design and layout that fits your style and the features that you want.
All layouts come as images, no code is written yet. This allows for easy tweaking and revisions - all little of this, a little less of that. Once each page layout is complete, we deliver them to you so that we go over the aspects of each piece, modifying each as needed, until you are happy not only with what you see (the layout), but with the interactions, functionalities, and costs.
Congratulations! You have a design.
Das Build
This is when the actual build takes place - that is, going from the approved design layouts to an actual working version of everything we talked about. You get a temporary space on our development servers and can log in at any time to see the progress of the site, test the interactions and functions, and make, d'oh!, changes.
If there are unforeseen snags, build questions, we come to you to discuss them - we don't just add expensive features and bill you later with some techno-jargon-reason as to why you "had to have them."
The Road to Production
Well, the build is complete. We've done testing to make sure that the site works as expected and we are almost ready to 'go live'. So, what's left? Well, content - that's what. We need to populate the site with the actual images, text, tracks, videos, everything and anything that needs to go into the site before the public sees it. But after that... a little server upload, a little final debugging, and you are live.
What else? Well, depending on how you decided to update your content, we need to train you on how to do that. Remember too that we are not going to build your site and simply hand it over leaving you to fend for yourself. If you have questions or problems, can't remember how to update a news item's image, whatever, shoot us an email or give us a call. We'll fix that!