All it takes, is time and money!
Going through my last year as a Management Information Systems student at California State University, Chico, one of my professors shared that motto with us. I had no idea then, how true those words would later become throughout my career. One of the most valuable tools sets I picked up through my education and experience is the management of a project from start to finish.
In the past, websites used to be 4 to 5 pages of content, had a cheesy animated mailbox icon for contact us, and were really just an afterthought to most business owners. Now, websites play a key roll in the success and sustainability of a business. Websites now have to “pack more punch”, interact with users, and be easily maintainable. These new web trends have required us web designers to refocus and become online software companies overnight.
Over the years, Chico Web Design and myself have come up with a common web design and development lifecycle tool set that we use on all major projects. Understanding these basic concepts will really give you and your company a glimpse into how we manage our projects.
- Requirements Gathering
Always the first and most important phase, requirements gathering. In the requirements gathering phase we speak with the client, gather their requests, required features, timeline, end goals, and any other ideas they have for their online business so we can begin to come up with a solid plan. This phase is used to communicate ideas and features between both parties. - Proposal
After Chico Web Design has gathered the requirements from the client the proposal phase commences. A proposal is a formalized set of requirements that both the client and Chico Web Design can agree upon. Typically, a proposal will discuss the feature set for both the front end of the website, as well as the administration portion of the website. At this point, financial obligations will be presented to the client for approval. - Design Phase
In the design phase, Chico Web Design will take all of the requested information and begin to create a draft of what the potential website could look like. We use a combination of graphic design tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator (for logos) to showcase how a website could look. Depending on the scope and budget of the project, we will come up with several variations of our thoughts and ideas to present to you. Design mockups are delivered in a JPEG format for the client to view on their personal computers.
Sample Mockup | Final Product - Design Review
Once the client has viewed the design mockups, a meeting or phone interview is scheduled to discuss the overall likes and dislikes of the design. Chico Web Design will always work with our clients until they are happy with their website design. This phase is very important because this is the backbone and framework for the remaining phases. When a website is in the design phases, changes can be made with ease. If we continue to the development phase, changing the design can take far more effort. My example to most clients relates to the building of a home. It is far easier to change the layout of a home when you are drawing the blueprints then to wait until the house is half way constructed. Often what was once a 5-minute change in the design phase can translate into several hours of redesigning and redeveloping. - HTML & CSS
The next two phases require no interaction with the client. Once the design mockups are finalized and approved, we begin to prepare the website for a web browser. HTML and CSS are the languages used to present a website to a user via a web browser or mobile device. HTML controls the content of a website, and CSS controls the presentation of the website. Graphic by graphic, line by line, our development team converts those images into a format that will allow users and search engines to view your website online. - Development
Once the XHTML and CSS phase is complete, our highly skilled web development team begins the process of turning ideas and drafts, into functionality and features. This phase relies heavily on the requirements gathering phase to ensure that the website functions as expected. Typically Chico Web Design builds it’s websites using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) technology. In it’s simplest terms, our developers use a web language called PHP to retrieve information from the MySQL database. That information in turn is displayed using HTML and CSS - Content Population
Leading up to this phase, it is recommended that the client is creating their content so Chico Web Design can easily populate and design the content quickly. It is the responsibility of the client to provide content in a digital format, or if they have chosen to use a content management solution, they can enter their content in at their own pace. - Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance is the task of verifying that all portions of the website are performing as specified in the requirements gathering phase. Chico Web Design will perform quality assurance tests throughout the development process. Traditionally, we ask our clients to do a final run through of the functionality to confirm that it is up to their standards and works as expected. - Go-Live
Go-live is the process of deploying a completed website from a development environment to production environment. If Chico Web Design is going to be the web host, this process is seamless and only requires the client to change a few settings at their domain registrar. Once this is complete your website is viewable to the public.