There are Ten(10) Main Steps to getting a New Website, Making it Operational, and Accessible to the World...
♦ All you need to do is develop a new website strategy and use the internet as a powerful marketing medium to expose your ideas, business, products or services to a larger audience. Having your own website can help promote your products, ideas, and services online. By providing up-to-date, interesting information to visitors, clients and prospective customers, you can generate regular visitors and sales. Our Website Design Services include the creation of a unique and custom design for your new or existing website, which depicts your industry, image, theme and other personal interests.
Alpha Designs is here to make these steps Simple.
1. Define the Ideas, Goals, and Purpose
♦ Identify the nature of website, brand and other attributes you want displayed to the world. It is important that we know exactly what the purpose of the website is, the type of information you want to display and in what manner. After you're happy with the idea of working with us, and we understand what you want we draft a proposal outlining what we think are the deliverables and cost of the project. You'll need to make sure we have not miss-understood you and that you are happy with our terms and the cost of the project. Once this step is finished and signed off, the Basic Design Fee is paid, then we move into the registration phase.
2. Find and Register the Right Website Name(URL)
♦ The Website Name (URL) is one of the most important steps in the creation process. The URL should reflect either the Name of the Person or Business, or the General Concept of what the website has to offer. At times, the actual 'Name' of the website is determined by what URL's are available at that time. It is best to wait until we have discussed the general idea of the website, and had time to research possible URL's that would work best for your website. If you find that 'Perfect' URL that fits your website, do not wait for us. Purchase It! If that URL is not your final decision to use, URL's are not so expensive as to prohibit the purchase of another name that more suits your desires.
3. Structural Concept and Website Visual Design
♦ We make an outline of the site based on its goals and target audience. It includes writing, editing and categorizing the needed content. Generating a content outline helps us to develop a detailed site map. This site plan covers every possible aspect of the information displayed. It is a visual representation of the website structure. Site layout is a non-graphical representation of a web page. It determines the elements that should be added on each page of the site such as images, content, functional elements like search, links, header, footer etc. It is important to provide user friendly web designs to our clients that are interesting and easy to navigate.
4. Feedback and Approval
♦ Once the requirements gathering stage is complete, our designers get to work to come up with sample web site designs. After several creative brainstorming sessions, our designers come up with visual designs. They review the project specifications and site map to draft different design samples that meet the project goals. After some more brainstorming sessions, our web designers and developers further refine the design drafts to improve them. Placement of elements is finalized, and color schemes are also decided. The Design Selection is converted to a final Mock-up which is ready to present to the client for initial review, feedback and approval. The Initial Design Mock-up for the website is presented to the client for feedback, revisions and updates. We value client feedback and obtain clients' comments, suggestions and approval at every step. Revisions on the mock-up is presented to the client according to the feedback and revised mock-up is discussed with the client. We do not move on to the next level unless the client approves a final design to be used as the new website design. We always provide assistance and make sure that the design we provide you is unique and created as per your wishes.
5. Website Development
♦ This phase consists of steps which are carried out for the website development process. The development phase is started by the conversion of the approved website design to HTML. Technical specifications like browser compatibility and other issues are also considered in this phase. After the design conversion, the technical phase of website development is started which includes programming and coding of the pages, creation of templates, content pages, scripting, database coding and integration. As our developers work on adding functionality to the converted design, our content writers collect information from the client and write content needed for the website sections to add them to the site. Coding the website involves several steps which include: CSS, HTML, Graphics, Flash, JavaScript, Database Design, Server Side Programming, and many more.
6. Finding a Host for your Website
♦ A Host is where the actual website content is stored. This 'storage location' is where the visitor is taken to when they type in your Website URL. A Host for your website is like a 'hard drive' on your home computer, except that it exists to be accessible through the Internet. We offer three levels of Hosting Service at Alpha Designs. Basic Hosting, Silver Hosting, and Gold Hosting. The level depends on how much content and expandability you want on your website.
7. Deploy / Publish the Website Content
♦ After the completion of the development phase, the our team runs various test plans and procedures for quality assurance to remove any bugs or errors in the website content and functionality. Once an initial review of the website is complete, the website is uploaded to the required staging URL for testing online.
8. Testing All Pages and Programs
♦ The website functionality is thoroughly checked by our developers. Depending on the type of interactive content and forms, the testing process can take several hours. We attempt to test for every conceivable usage by visitors to the website. Security for the website content is also tested at this time, and modified if need be. The final website URL is sent to the client for review and suggestions. Any required changes are implemented on the website so that everything is delivered according to the client requirements.
9. Final Deployment, Make World Accessible
♦ After the client reviews and approves the final website, we move the website from the staging URL to the actual domain where the website will work. Any deployment issues are also handled by us to make the website launch as smooth and hassle free for you as possible. Additional testing is done at this point to be sure the move was successfull and every aspect of the website is operational.
10. Website Maintenance & Updating
♦ Website maintenance is an on-going process which is generally required after the website is deployed. The client may need to add new products or information regarding services to the website. The client may want a general style change to be made to the entire website, to keep up with more modern designs, and features. We can take care of all kinds of website maintenance and updates for our clients. If the client wants us to install client content-editing capabilities, most changes to database files or modifications to pages can be done without our help. Client editing for any type of database would require Custom Programs to be installed.
