Website Development Process
Some of the preliminary big picture questions we ask our clients include the following: What is the shelf life of your new site, who is your target audience, can you provide us with a brand platform, how often will content be updated, who will be editing the content, and what do you need the site to do for your business or organization? The development of your site will fall into most of the phases shown at the left at various stages throughout the process, click on the links to learn more.
Discovery
Our discovery process includes the initial kickoff meeting where we will meet with your key decision makers to determine the details, features and needs of the website. The discovery process also includes the time we spend reviewing your site and its content in detail, identifying user navigation issues, design limitations and any competitor or similar sites.
Strategic Content Development
Our process merges the values of branding, marketing and messaging to create a holistic approach to developing your presence online and in print. By being advocates for both the brand and the user, we ensure that all content on your website directly facilitates your user’s experience while strategically meeting your business goals. Strategic content development requires a deep understanding of both user experience design and brand and marketing strategy, as well as the experience to be versatile and fluid as a writer. Deliverables may include a brand platform, messaging, marketing & brand strategy recommendations, editorial guidelines, copywriting and editing.
Information Architecture
Website information architecture is an approach to the design and planning of websites which—like architecture itself—involves technical, aesthetic and functional criteria. As in traditional architecture, the focus is on the user and user requirements. This requires particular attention to website content, usability testing, interaction design, information architecture and web design. This work will help us to determine what works and what doesn’t from a user-friendly perspective, including how the user will navigate through the site. Deliverables may include a sitemap, wireframes, user flows, user profiles, and sitemap annotations.
Conceptual & Creative
With every design, we strive to create a site that will stand up for years to come, both from a visual and a performance standpoint. We understand the importance of brand cohesion, combined with user-friendliness and unique aesthetic style; our goal is to merge all of these into our designs. As originators of highly customized content, we always create each design concept with your brand and identity in mind, delivering fresh, informative, custom designs that integrate easily into any content management system (CMS). The design concept will show the look and feel of the site, including the top banner area, main navigation, color palette, font choice, page size, layout, and positioning of features that will live on the home page.
Project Management & Collaboration
Services include but are not limited to meetings, conference calls, research, scheduling, budgeting, interaction with third-party vendors, management of the team and overall project planning. The project manager will create a master timeline and individual timelines for each of the components, manage communications between the client and our team, and research and determine of the best resources to use for your project when called for. Please let us know if you foresee any issues with the above mentioned process, as we strive to put our client’s needs first, and are open to hearing what works best for your needs.
Development
We provide a wide range of development services, from programing to search engine optimization (SEO) to maintenance and more. Our goal is to demystify technology choices and empower the client with the appropriate tools to match their needs. We understand that the web is constantly evolving, and as such an important part of web development is creating sites that can be used by the widest range of users, across a multitude of platforms and versions. We often recommend Joomla! as our preferred content management system (CMS), however we also work with other open source CMSs such as Drupal, WordPress and other custom solutions to meet your needs. Using these tools, our company is able to build highly functional and competitively priced websites. We ensure the final product is compliant with all modern Internet standards such as W3C Markup Validation Service (validator.w3.org), and ADA Section 508 Standards (section508.gov) and utilize progressive enhancement.
Mobile & Web Apps
We create custom apps that help connect you with the world and build continuous relationships with your customers. We create apps for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices, or for the web, as interactive programs that play inside of browsers.
E-Commerce
Online sales make up a major segment of the Internet economy, and we have a wealth of experience in e-commerce. The development of e-commerce sites require a set of skills in which Conscious excels, and there are many solutions available, so let us help guide you through the panoply of possibilities.
Training
We offer several types of training services: Written documentation, telephone, in-person training, and video training. Written documentation is supplied by the CMS developer community and is in the form of a user manual PDF. Customized written documentation is available for an additional fee. Telephone or on site training can be arranged for a small group of website publishers; sessions are usually done in no more than two-hour increments. Perhaps the most popular form of training we provide are video clips that record the user’s computer screen, showing the publisher how to navigate through the back-end of the CMS to accomplish tasks such as editing text on a page, adding/deleting pages, adding users, adding photos and more.
Maintenance Packages
Given that information and web technology is constantly changing, in order for your site to remain relevant, it needs to be maintained. As such, we offer maintenance packages built to fit your needs that include everything from talking tech about your servers with hosting companies to ensuring that your software is up-to-date and secure. We take care of all your maintenance needs so you won’t have to.
