You’ve decided that you need a website for your business, but you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by everything. That’s understandable, depending on what you’re looking for, it can be quite a big undertaking. Let me walk you through my process.
Initial Meeting
I like to sit down, usually over a cup of coffee, when I am meeting potential clients for the first time. I have a brief questionnaire that I go through, to determine the needs of your business and ultimately the needs of your website. This usually takes about half an hour. Once I get a feel for what you are looking for in a website, I sit down and draft up a list of deliverables and an estimate.
When a client has Okay-ed the estimate, I draft up a contract to protect both parties. I then get a sitemap down on paper and send it for approval. A sitemap is a very basic overview of what can be found on each page of the website.
Wireframing
With the sitemap approved then I begin wireframing. Wireframes show the high-level design, look and feel of the website. I like to start out by sketching ideas down on paper, using the old-fashioned pen-to-paper approach allows me to get my ideas out quicker.
Now that I have some ideas down on paper then I will turn to Adobe XD put together highly detailed prototypes. These essentially will show you exactly what your website will look like. Because I believe mobile is the way of the future, I start out by designing the look of the website for smartphones and work my way up through tablets and laptops finishing with a desktop view.
I send these off to get approval before I even start typing in any code. It saves a lot of hassle for both parties to get the design down before beginning to code.
Coding
This is where the magic happens. With the prototypes approved, I get down to work. Over the course of several hours spent in front of a computer typing up some code, where once there was no website, a website is created!