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This first phase is probably
undertaken twice, first by you when you decide to develop a
website for your business. You need to justify that there is a
role for a site within your business.
Secondly, by us, we will need to
know such things as the target audience, primary and secondary.
We need to understand the aims of the site, what it is to
achieve for your business. We need to understand the purpose of
the site, what is it going to do for your customers – current
and potential.
An audit of your competitor’s
websites will allow us to understand your market and how they
market the customers.
This knowledge will help us
develop the requirements for your site.
This phase is when we make the
design decisions of how your site will look, and how it will
work. From our analysis we should have a good idea on your
target audience. Now we are able to decide which technologies
are best suited for your company. Then we develop the user
interface and navigation system. Also, the site will be
optimized for the average customer connectivity to the WEB and
well as the configuration of their computer system.
The personality, the look and
feel of the website will also be established at this phase. This
might be the ideal time to think over your identity, logo and
branding of your company. If you need to, we could bring in
Graphic Designers that would assist with a new image.
The bottom line is your
primary requirements and we will focus on that issue.
Construction is often considered
to be the project in its entirety his is not the case.
Construction is the phase where ideas and design come together
and grow into your image. Pages are created, effects are built
in, images are produced, gateway scripts written and any other
programming requirements are produced. Obviously this is a time
intensive part of the project; hence this must be done carefully
because it’s the backbone to the site.
Documentation is an important
requirement, and the area no one enjoys to do, but without it
the project could no reflect the image to the customer you wish.
This information you want to convey to your customers must be
the best, easiest to understand and concise so the customer gets
the information in a fashion they understand.
Testing phase of the project that
is sometimes overlooked or considered expensive and therefore
reduced to the barest minimum. In any project there will be
faults and bugs and they need to be eliminated prior to
production. We all want to make the best possible presentation
to the customer; therefore testing should be a must. In order to
control expenses just the obvious errors will be correct and the
balance if any will be done as time goes by.
Testing has 2 primary phases,
off-line and on-line.
- Off-line requires the
developer to exercise each of the elements of the site,
links, images etc. while they are on the local computer,
i.e. not connect to the Internet.
- On-line requires that a
series of test are carried out to ensure that during the
transfer nothing was corrupted. Some elements can only be
test while on-line. These test are conducted on a separate
system so the consumer doesn’t see it until the site has
been completed.
Another test source could be
using an outsource company to run tests prior to being on-line.
These are an additional expense and only recommend for extensive
websites and have multi databases and unique services.
After our testing evaluation and
most to the rough edges have been smoothed over as well as the
elements that allow the customers to interact with the site has
been reviewed we’re ready for feed back.
The final process needs to be
looked upon as a small project cycle in its’ own right. During
this process we then refine, implement and retest the changes
and presto a new web presence will emerge.
Registration with the numerous
search engines needs to be completed and tested as well. Keep in
mind that each search engine is different. Each search engine
varies on its registration requirements and on how long it takes
to list a site so the consumer can locate it |
