We base our web development on a 3 phase approach. This allows us to really get under the skin of your brand to achieve exactly what you want.

Phase 1 – Understanding/Discovery

In this phase, we start by understanding the objectives and user mind-sets. This is the phase in which we engage with you to jointly decide in detail what it is we need to accomplish.

This consists of two elements:

Understanding your business

• What is the business model and who are the target audience?
• What do we want to achieve?
• What is the timescale for the project?

Understanding your audience

• What is your target audience?
• How do they engage with the website?
• What do the users want from your digital presence and does this match your ambitions for them?
• We will work with you to define the personas of your key users and describe the scenarios in which they will interact with your site.

This is where we will consider key points discussed in the meeting such as:

• Content management to allow you to add different ideas to the site.
• Comment systems for user contribution.
• Social networking branches – Twitter, Facebook, Digg etc.

This work will inform the design process and allow us to make some final decisions about brand space, design look and feel, visual signposting, graphical language and controls and features to deliver a targeted solution.

Following the completion of this phase, we will produce a site specification and proposal, detailing timescale and costing as well as a site plan.

Phase 2 – Design

Usually we find from our discovery process comes fresh ideas and new perspectives. Using this output, we will be able to produce a high-level concept for your site. We will work with you to focus these ideas into the best possible user experience.

Design will then be split into two threads:

Interaction design

Using input from our research and your business objectives we will map out interactions across different user personas and scenarios to define the building blocks for the home page and online material.

This work stream is focused on ensuring users engage with your site to fulfil their objectives and have a compelling experience which makes them want to return.

Final wireframes will then be produced (functionality diagrams).

Visual Design

By taking the input from the branding defined, we will start to make the site more appealing, engaging and intuitive to use.

You can expect to receive complete wireframes and site designs at the end of this phase.

Phase 3 – Develop

In this phase we translate the final design into a fully functioning, tested, standards compliant product.

Our User Centred process allows us to use technology in clever ways, so instead of technology defining the user experience, we use technology to enhance it.

We have experience in developing high performance, secure and search engine optimised sites which are highly accessible and designed in a flexible and modular fashion to ensure future enhancement is easily achievable.

The development phase for this project may consist of several sub-phases as it is potentially a large, constantly evolving site. This means that although the site will be planned as a whole, we will approach it in a much more modular fashion, allowing the most efficient release schedule.