Friday August 22 8:57 PM
I was recently asked "What if I don't like the design?" and I realized that there is a weakness in my marketing in that potential clients may not know how the design process works. Read on for my answer. You will like the site design, because if you don't then I tweak it until you do. It's a highly collaborative process since involving you ensures you're not only aware of what I'm doing but a part of it. The process goes like this:

1) Discovery phase: I ask you probing questions about what you're looking for. I'm good at ferreting out what you need and what you don't need through a standard set of questions I ask and follow-up questions to those. I do research on the answers and brainstorm for things you may not have thought of. During this phase we rough out the site and identify the site structure and content, as well as timelines and schedules. We'll also discover how you intend to measure the success of your site. I now have enough information to send you a detailed estimate which is fairly accurate in scope and costs. Typically I'll require 1/3 payment in advance, the rest due at launch. This depends on the size of the project.

2) Concept phase: I present several concepts to you and we discuss the relative merits of each, tweaking the ideas until we both have a pretty good idea of where we're going.

3) Design phase: I work up the concepts into a design and variations. I present them to you and we discuss them and identify changes.

4) Once you've approved the design I'll code it and provide a test site for you to see how it works and make changes to the interface as necessary.

5) Once the coding and testing is complete, we launch the site when you send the last 2/3 of the payment. At this point you are entirely satisfied with the final site.

6) After the site launches you can measure its success over time by the metrics we identified in step 1.

This process ensures you not only are aware of what I'm doing but approve of it at each step of the way.