10 Steps of Web Design
How It's Done
From start to finish, it is important for you too know how your project will progress. Below is a general workflow for web design projects. Please contact SS Interactive with your questions.
1. Layout goals and expectations
One of the more challenging aspects for a new web site owner is getting down your ideas and goals. Try and be specific and to the point as possible. If you feel like you need some ideas, do not worry, we can give suggestions and directions where needed.
2. Fill out the Web Site Questionnaire
We have put together a few questions that will hopefully help your project get started on the right foot. Some questions will be directly beneficial for us, others will simply help you make decisions on certain aspects of your project. Perhaps even ones you did not realize that were needing to be made!
If any of the questions are confusing, just ask and we will explain them further. And some may not apply to your project, so simply skip them.
3. Sign the contract
To save both yourself and us from any confusion down the road, we have a pretty standard contract. You can view a sample web design contract, in Acrobat PDF format.
4. Initial payment
If the total project timeline is less than two months, then we generally ask for a 50% initial payment. Longer projects, or under special situations, we will break it out based on your needs. At this time, we accept business checks, cashiers checks, and money orders.
5. Rough draft designs
Now the real work can begin! We will take everything previously discussed, and the information from the questionnaire, and design the "rough drafts." They will be large image files that we will either post online and email the links, or actually email the images to you.
Each project is a little different, so we may do two, three, or more, rough drafts for your review. We will try and make them as original and differing as possible so that you can choose from a wider range of possibilities.
Also, some projects will require multiple drafts per section, depending on how many varying pages the final site will have. For example, some web site's opening page will have a different design and layout then the rest of the site.
6. Tweaking of design and layout
As we receive feedback from you, we will make "tweaks" and adjustments to one or more of the drafts. Sometimes our clients have us take a certain aspect of one design and "merge" it with another.
We continue to do this until you are satisfied with all the graphical elements, positioning, and other "non-text" sections on the design.
7. Finalizing the design
Once the layout, design, and graphical elements are decided upon, it is difficult to re-do certain aspects of the design. Please make sure that everything is just the way you like it before giving the go-ahead. You may even want to sleep on it for awhile, show it to some friends, etc, and then come to a conclusion.
8. Programming and coding
The difficult, or boring (depending on your perspective) job for us. Sit back and let us do the work here!
9. Adding content
Depending the project, either you will add the majority of the content, or we will. This includes all the text for the site -- sales pitches, about you page(s), how to contact you, services, etc -- as well as photos in a gallery, products for your catalog.
Of course, you can start to prepare for this ahead of time. In fact, it would be a good idea to, so when the time comes to add it you have it all organized and read to go.
Final payment
If everything goes as planned, you will be more than happy to pay the balance.
