Website Development Process....

The Website Development Process involves several major interrelated components: Evaluating opportunities, setting goals, organizing resources, developing budgets, outlining a structure, establishing the legal relationships, and building the web site.

The key components of the website development process are:

Client Survey and Content Questionnaire
This document helps us evaluate your situation and provides some basic information regarding: who you are, what your time frame is, how many pages may be required, if you need a domain name, what resources you have in place, why you want a website, etc.

The Website Marketing Plan
What are your goals? Are they realistic? What resources in time, money and staff will be required? What is the purpose of your website? What products or services do you plan on offering? Who are your customers? How will you connect with them?

Identify who and how the website will serve. Discuss what you need to have on the website and why. Be clear about what your business should gain from it and how.

The Proposal & Agreement
How much will it cost? How is this all going to work together? How long will it take? What will I have to provide? What does the Agreement include? What about copyrights, trademarks & warranties?

Project Development
A team of developers, writers, programmers, artists and other individuals, including your designated people, that are given the responsibility for creating your website.

Thoroughly develop the material for the website, making sure it is helpful, concise and 'readable'. Keep your target customer/surfer in mind - if it is of no use to him/her you may be wasting your time...

Website Architecture & Design
This phase of the process is where the site content and design features are developed. The graphic interface is produced and the layouts, illustrations, photographs, navigation systems, and other graphic elements, type styles and faces are applied. Links are checked, programming is analyzed and tested and the site structure begins to take shape.

Your spending can probably be broken down into three blocks:

• The development and design fees for the computer code
• Website hosting fees (payment to store the website on a computer connected permanently to the internet)
• Update fees - would you buy from a company that sent you material that is a year old? One of the keys to website success is to keep it fresh so that a website remains useful and relevant and so customers will come back more frequently to see what has changed - don't have a 'cobweb' site!

At the end of this process, your website is loaded onto the server and final testing is completed. It is very important at this point that the marketing and promotion of your website kicks into high gear and that arrangements have been made for site maintenance and management.