The 6 step process when starting a web project with us
A question we get asked a lot when beginning a new project with a client is ‘What’s your process?’ We get it, it’s important to know what going to happen when you trust us to help with one of your most important assets, the website.
So we’ve detailed what a typical process is going to look like when partnering with Search Stack to either redesign or build a new website.
1. Discovery call
Every website project begins with the discovery call. You the client will come to us with the brief, whether they need a completely new site and brand, or just a simple refresh. We book a 30minute call online to discuss your project. We’ll talk about how we work, the process, costings, and rough time frames. We’ll aim to get a proposal over to you within a few days.
2. Branding questionnaire
No matter the project it is vital for us to get a crash course in your business. We need to know what you stand for, what you want to be famous for, your why, services, ideal clients, and most importantly what success looks like to you.
It’s a bit of homework and it may require a bit of critical thinking, you may be tackling some of these questions for the first time, but it’s important for us to get a deeper understanding so we can challenge and create something that goes above and beyond.
We’ll also send our initial invoice to get the project underway at this point.
3. Branding workshop and next steps
We’ll take a couple of days to go through your answers from the questionnaire and book in an online workshop. This will allow us to report back our findings and pitch what we feel the site could look and feel like from our research and interpretations of your business.
We don’t want to just create something that just looks great (although we definitely do this) but has substance, thought, brand strategy, and meaning behind it. Because this is what will help you stand out and inspire action from your visitors.
4. Wireframes and mock-up design
Once we know our direction and strategy we’ll get started on wireframes and mockups. We’ll usually present to you basic wireframes to show the user experience (UX) and flow of the customer journey on your site.
Once we’ve done the wireframes we’ll create and pitch a mock-up design, we like to make sure we really nail and the look and feel before we start the build as it’ll make the build process quicker.
Our Mockups are done on AdobeXD and we send through a full .pdf as well as an interactive link that will allow you to make notes on the design.
We’ll usually wrap this all up with a final call to discuss any thoughts on the design, tweaks, and changes.
5. Website build and catch-ups
This is where the fun happens. We’ll crack on with the build of your site, coding away on a development domain on our server; this means your current site will stay live while we build your new site. And when we’re ready to finally go live it makes the swap super simple. We’ll catch up with you weekly to show our progress and get your ongoing feedback as we build the site.
6. Final run through and go live
We always have a final run-through of the site where we’ll jump on a share screen call to talk through anything.
As standard, we offer 2 free weeks post-launch to make any changes to the site to get it absolutely perfect, anything after the two weeks that may be extra additions to the site will be charged at an hourly rate.
We will also send you through your site logins and record a loom video going through the backend, that’ll be a tutorial on how to make the necessary changes to your website.