Web Site Design
We believe that the internet is a constantly evolving entity and as such any web design must have the ability to evolve with time. The philosophy behind our website development process and the main reason why no two of our sites are the same price and why we believe no two clients have the same requirement goes like this:
We assume that no client, regardless of how technically minded or internet 'savvy' he or she may be, really knows what he/she wants out of a website. We believe that the process of designing, developing, testing and delivering a web site is an evolutionary or iterative process and always begins with one or more meetings between client, co-ordinator and designer.
We always involve the client in every stage of the development process and normally set up an initial meeting where we discuss the basic requirement focusing on what the client wants out of the site, how it should be laid out and the graphic design.
Next we quickly produce a skeleton site the client can see in order to help him/her visualise our idea. We don't take the clients input as gospel and go away, develop the site from start to finish and then give it to the client saying;
"there you are, that is what you asked for as laid out in the requirement you signed off and authorised us to implement, your invoice is in the post".
We accept that what the client wants and what we perceive the client to want can more often than not be quite different
We rapidly develop a first draft of the site for the client to see and present it to the client and invite the client to criticise it, the more ruthless the criticism the better we like it because 15 years of commercial experience in this business tells us that
"it is only through the client's criticism of what we present him with that we are able to extract the true requirement of the user, enabling us to deliver the product he asked for".
So in a hypothetical scenario we'd present the client with a mock site. The client says "yes I like the colour scheme but can we get rid of the menus on the left and put them on the top, can we also make the company logo better quality and more predominant and we need a forum or message board and a news section.
At this point we take onboard what the client says and redo the mock-up page and re-present it to the client, inviting his criticism again. So you see it really is an iterative process right up to the point where the client says "yes, well done - that is exactly what I want". At that point we produce a template and respective content and graphics and create the site and continually keep the client in the loop until it is live and he has agreed that is what he wants.
At this point we test it, ensure it does what it is supposed to and then we continually review the site, taking into account any input the client has and act on it. That way we can ensure the client not only gets delivered what he asked for but continually has what he asked for.
