Web Design Process and Best Practices

We have an effective and proven web design process as explained below:

Project Discovery

Discovery is the first and most important step in understanding your organization's goals, requirements, time lines and overall expectations. We become a member of your team understanding your target market, products and services as well as how to generate leads with your new or existing online property. We believe your website should be a tool to initiate communication from those interested in what you have to offer.

In addition we establish a creative briefing on the requirements for the look and feel of your site. We want to know what your brand is so we can establish it throughout your website. Our creative director will ask questions about fonts, colors, photography and layout before beginning to design.

While we may be the Web design professionals, you have vital information about your business, your customers, your likes and dislikes that will make your site a success. We will get together with you over the phone or in person to establish a "creative briefing". We will ask you questions that will help us understand the new look and feel of your website. This is a critical session to understand the calls to action on the home page, navigational elements and overall sub page content layout.

Creative Design

Once we understand what makes your target market "tick" we're now ready to create your new design. We start with a blank canvas and bring together creative elements to emulate your brand while keeping up with current web trends and making you look professional. We know first impressions are critical and want you to shine.

We will provide you a web design concept within 2 weeks of our creative brief meeting. Your feedback will help us to determine which direction to take. We may only need to do some tweaking, or most often the general design is ready to code with minor text changes.

Programming/Coding

Once you have approved the of the design and made the appropriate revisions - we'll start "coding" the site to html. We program the design so it will work on the internet. We make sure to program the site so that it will load quickly and be viewable in the latest web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox as well as many resolutions on PCs and Macs.

Page Building/Feedback

Once the site is programmed and the links and navigational elements are working - we will begin to insert your content, pictures and other information into the web pages. We will build all the pages and then have you review them in case we need to make revisions.

Test and launch

Once you have approved the final design, we add and format the copy (text) to all the pages and set up your desired features, such as contact forms. Once everything has been approved by you, we upload your site to the Web and fully test its functionality. We make sure that your site can be viewed as intended in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and other common browsers and resolutions.

The Web design process generally takes anywhere from 3 - 6 weeks. To alleviate any unnecessary delays, we recommend that you have the majority of your copy written (and proofed) before your design begins. Mount Evans Designs offers discounted copywriting and Web design combo packages as a one-stop solution to your Web design needs.