We begin every project by assessing where you are with your website/application goals currently, what your current pain points are, and where you’d like to be. This stage is a lot like talking to an architect when you determine that you need to either remodel your house or simply build a new one. You’ll have lots of questions — you may want to know what new technologies are available; you also may just want to get an idea of cost. We’re happy to provide our insight and expertise. We provide this initial consultation free of charge.

Once you’ve decided to hire us, we’ll begin the strategy stage. In strategy we determine, in detail, exactly what your goals are and how we’ll achieve them. The result is a written document that we use to define the scope and cost, create a timeline, and define discrete tasks as well as to measure success on completion; this is the most important stage, and requires close collaboration with you (a time commitment on your part) to ensure we get it right.

Depending on the project, the Strategy Document may be a single paragraph or several pages, but we don’t begin work without a complete one.

Once we’ve clearly defined the goals of the project, we break them into collections of discrete tasks. These tasks are the detailed instructions we use to develop the application and create the finished product. Some of these tasks will be assigned to you: typically, we’ll need content (text copy, image assets) from you, and we’ll need it by a certain date. The Project Plan ensures that we’re all on the same page about what’s needed, who’s doing it, and when.

This is where the tasks are executed — typically, a lot coding and configuration. QA (quality assurance) is included in this stage. We do all of our development on staging servers separate from your live website, so there’s no risk of disrupting your users’ experience.

Once we’re all satisfied with the website/application in the staging environment, you’ll give us the thumbs up to show it to the world. We modify your production server with directives to ensure that you won’t lose any existing search rankings, move the code and database to your production servers, then call you to congratulate you!

Two weeks after launch of your new website/application/feature, we meet with you to discuss how we all feel the project went. We complete this process internally as well, but we’ve found that the end-of-project feedback we receive from our clients is invaluable — whether good, bad, or in-between.