My Process

A new project might seem big and scary, but really, it's almost always a familiar six step process - Planning, Research, Design and Prototyping, Coding, Testing and Teaching, and Launch.

Planning

I meet with you and your team to determine your wants, needs, problems, estimated budget and a reasonable timeline for the project. That will help me to draft an accurate proposal and allow us to come to an agreement that will define the scope of our work together. From there, we'll work on a project document that will help us both keep track of where we're going and what we need to do to make the project a success.

In my experience, a well-managed, structured project flows better, and it means a lot to me to be able to present you with weekly updates with recent accomplishments, to-do lists, due dates and reminders instead of only getting in contact when I need approval on something.

Research

Developing a great project means doing our homework. I'll spend as much time as possible talking with you and your team, along with reviewing your existing content and learning about what you do. The more I discover about your organization, your message and your audience, the better I'll be able to help with your needs.

And I think we'd all be a lot happier if I knew about those things that you absolutely hate that you never, ever want to see on your website before I ever put fingers to keyboard.

Prototyping and Design

Our goals are clear, and it's time for me to sketch and make wireframes to get feedback on what we learned during research. If the schedule allows for it, I'll create static mockups to get approval on look and feel, but the key part of this step is creating an in-browser mockup with your site content. That way, you and your team can provide feedback on a real website viewed on actual devices, and I can work with your content creators to craft a better user experience.

Plus, we get to do that thing where we resize the browser window back and forth, hypnotized by the wonders of responsive design.

Developing

Once the architecture, layout and aesthetics are locked in, I focus on creating templates, forms, widgets, custom functionality and back-end customizations. We'll check our progress against the needs and wants established in the Planning and Research steps, to make sure that what I'm coding stays within scope while accomplishing our goals.

For projects using Wordpress, I'll set up a test install as a staging area for launch, allowing everyone on the team the time to get comfortable with the CMS. That also means that we can collaborate as I push updates to the theme, so I can add little custom fixes and help text in the back-end specifically requested by you and your team.

Testing and Training

There's no sense in getting a brand new website that you don't know how to update. I offer time during every project to work with you and your team to teach everyone what they need to know about what goes where, which images should be in what aspect ratio and what to do if something breaks. Not only does it help make you more effective at accomplishing your goals once your site goes live, but it provides me valuable feedback on what to tweak, what to simplify and where a little help text can go a long way.

I also test what we've done together on multiple devices, in all of the popular browsers, to make sure that we catch all of the possible bugs and quirks that pop up during web development. (And for clients that request it, I can test for specific cases, like IE8 compatibility or Opera Mobile users that browse on Android devices made in 2012 while upside down.)

Launch

After I push our completed work out into the world, I run down my launch checklist to make sure that your 301s aren't causing 404s, that the site is responding as quickly as possible, and that there were no typos in those last minute changes you made the night before. (Believe me, I know you only needed to change just that one thing that's been bugging you, and I'm here to help.) I'll update your Google Search Console settings, and before the day is over, plan out a post-launch plan to help you with what comes next.

Whether it's occasionally helping you with minor updates or tracking analytics and making changes to improve your conversion rate, I'll be ready for whatever you need.