Process

How a job with me works.

Phases of a Project

Study, brainstorming, mock-ups, implementation, modification, polishing, maintenance, updates.

Study

Or perhaps "analysis". In this phase we figure out what you need your website to do, and how it fits in with the rest of your business.

Brainstorming

This is the phase where ideas fly thick and fast. Many of them stupid or irrelevant; but we can recognize those pretty easily and weed them out later. Meanwhile, if we let the imaginations flow for a while, interesting and unexpected things often turn up.

Mock-Ups

Paper or online mock-ups of the site, to let us examine and perhaps show to users ideas on the information architecture, site navigation, and design.

Implementation

Make it real!

Modification

We always find or think of things along the way. Or sometimes the business environment changes while we're working. So some things have to be changed in the planned site.

Polishing

A careful runthrough with 000000 steel wool makes everything look cleaner and smoother.

Maintenance

Having a website is an ongoing propositon. It needs to be kept current with information, business news and products, and compatibility with the latest browsers.

Updates

Sometimes big things have to change or be added. Or ideas postponed from the brainstorming phase need to be implemented.

Billing

Generally projects this size work better billed by the hour.

To negotiate a fixed price, a very careful definition of the work to be done must be performed first, which is expensive, and then the project must be limited to that work—changes along the way can't be accommodated (or have to be negotiated in tedious detail).

This is almost never the best way to handle a web project; we all normally learn a lot along the way, and it's important to incorporate what we've learned into the work we do. However, if you need a fixed-price bid, I can do that.