Why you should hire us for your next project. An overview of what you’re going to get.

Hiring a web development agency can be a scary process. You don't know what to expect, you don't know who to trust, and you may not know exactly what you need.

A nice way to start things off would be to give you some idea of what you can expect from us, and what we expect of you. This should give you some insight into how we work and why we do things the way we do. Got questions? Need clarification? Just get in touch.

Before we meet, we'll exchange some questions to see if our companies would be a good fit for each other. If so, then we plan the Initial Meeting. We'll establish an agenda for the meeting so that our time together will be well spent and productive.

You should set aside a few hours for the meeting as it will allow the opportunity to ask and answer lots of questions about the project, your business, your goals, your customers, your vision, your competitors, your budget and any special requirements you may have.

While we supply our fair share of ideas and brainstorming, we mostly listen to your needs. The more we know about your needs, the more likely the project will be completed on time and on budget. We've found that it's also a good idea to have the key decision makers present at the initial meeting just so we can get everyone on the same page, save hours of time in the long run and avoid any surprises down the road.

After the initial meeting, we can begin to finalize the project estimates in terms of cost and time. We'll get back to you immediately with this information and provide a work order that shows exactly what is and is not included in the scope of the project. Once we receive the deposit, we immediately begin working on your project.

Next, we perform research and create a strategy. Using the project goals and requirements with the customer and competitor information that you provided, we analyze the current landscape and devise a plan to engage customers and outperform competitors.

We'll analyze your competition and unveil any techniques, strategies and technologies they're using and come up with a game plan to beat them. We'll also provide you with detailed information about the other sites your customers are likely to visit and other firms they are likely to engage with.

This is also the phase where we will examine what keywords your customers are using to locate your products or services in search engines and how easy or difficult it will be to appear in those particular searches.

Content is the heart of any web based project, it's the reason your customers visit in the first place. Without good content, you won't have much luck attracting and retaining customers. For this reason, the production of site content should be taken very seriously and not treated as an afterthought.

If you are not comfortable creating your own content, we will create the content for you. Rest assured we will always share and discuss the content with you to avoid any surprises later on.

After creating the content, we can begin to design a visual interface to display it. We break out our trusty pencil and paper and begin creating some rough sketches of the site layout. After our design team has settled on something that works, we'll review it together to make sure it will meet all of the goals we outlined in the initial meeting.

After we establish a general layout on paper, we create a "wireframe" layout on the computer using a grid and some gray boxes to show where content will be positioned and establish a visual hierarchy for your site. We also settle on a color palette and establish what the overall texture or "feel" of the site should be. After everyone has agreed on the wireframe layout, we can start creating the graphical elements that will make up the final interface of the site.

After the first layout is created we'll sit down and discuss your thoughts on it and present our reasons for doing what we did. We'll make some revisions and changes until the layout is perfect, and then we can begin to code it. It's also important to remember that we may perform usability testing on the layout at various stages of the design. Usability testing will give us real world feedback concerning the effectiveness of the design in accomplishing our goals.

Now we can begin to write the code that will allow the world to see your site. We use modern web standards to create our websites and most of them also comply with the Section 508 accessibility laws, if that's a requirement for your company. That's just our way of saying we build websites so they can be used by anyone and will last a long time.

We test and debug our code to make sure it looks the same and works in every modern web browser out there: Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Google's Chrome, Netscape Navigator, Flock and several others. Legacy browsers can be supported if that is a requirement.

Now it's time to integrate the website's code with the software and databases that will bring it to life, add functionality and allow you to maintain it over the long term. Put on your pocket protectors, folks. It's gonna be an exciting ride.

Depending on the complexity of your project, this could take several days to several weeks or longer. We'll let you know up front how long we expect to be in the implementation phase, so you'll have some idea before we even get started.

We also test and debug the software to ensure it runs perfectly in all browsers on all operating systems. In many cases, we can provide you with a web address where you can view the progress of your project and even contribute to the content as it's being built.

We go over the entire project with a fine toothed comb to see if we can find any mistakes, typos, broken links or anything that just isn't 100% right.

Next, we'll hand the project off to you and let you explore it and suggest any final changes before launch. We ask you to make a list of any final issues that need to be fixed and we'll review them with you. These changes should be based upon the agreed upon work order. If not, then new costs may be incurred at this stage.

We provide training for you and your staff to manage the site over the long term and detailed training on how to use our software. In addition, we offer training for things like managing a Search Engine Advertising campaign, interpreting your website analytics, and writing good content for the web.

We also offer online training to all of our partners through a secure connection on our website. And lastly, we offer long term support, maintenance and upgrades of our code, content and software so you'll never have to worry about being left behind.

Every project is unique. Your business is one-of-a-kind and your website will reflect that. Now that we've said that, it's a good time to explain that the overview of our working process that you just read is only that, an overview.

If we need to add or subtract a few steps or work hand-in-hand with another agency, then that's perfectly OK. Our only concern is that your project is profitable, your customers are happy and we get the satisfactory feeling of a job well done. That's what a "win-win-win" situation is all about.