Often, I talk to clients in need of a new website but they feel either overwhelmed or unsure where to start. Usually they have an idea of what needs to be done, but unless you have been through the process from planning to site launch and beyond it can be difficult to know where to start and how to proceed. I like to give a basic analogy of building a house to help clients understand how we go about it here at Suits Digital.
Below is a simplified comparison of the roles involved
House Website
Architect – Project Manager/Lead
Builder/Forman – Project Manager/Lead
Tradespeople – Specialists
Plumber Designers
Electrician Developers
SEO Implementer
Council Signoff – User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
So much like building a house we take a very project-based approach.
Planning, Sitemap & Hierarchy
There is no question the planning and early stages of any project can often be as long or longer than the actual building. How often do you drive past construction and say wow that’s coming up fast? what you don’t see at the time is the prior 12 months of planning. Any new house or renovation needs an architect to draw up the plans and in our case our plans are the sitemap/site hierarchy. Understanding the layout of the site, where content goes, the user experience etc all need to be covered off before any design or content creation can even begin. The most helpful starting is bring all the relevant stakeholders together and develop these plans together. Suits Digital generally hold workshops in the early stages for our clients to facilitate this process.
Building the Site
Once you are ready to build the site, just like with a house the client takes a step back. With all the ground work and planning done implementation can take place in a dev environment or in a private location. A very basic overview of some of the steps can include:
- Hosting/URL/Environment setup
- Software installation
- Template creation
- Content population
- Forms/E-Comm/CRM Integrations
- Custom software
- Analytics and tracking integration
- Security
- Testing
During the above the project manager should be available to communicate progress, updates and answer any questions. Although all the planning and designing was done, it is generally the case that there will be a few changes and surprises along the way, keeps things exciting, though in a serious sense these changes should be managed and incorporated with minimal disruption to the overall goals set out for the project.
UAT, Signoff and Launch
With the build completed, access to the site can be given to the client and testing can begin. Both parties should conduct testing to ensure as many issues are resolved in the user acceptance testing (UAT) as possible. We recommend a checklist of items and usually provide this so that all relevant functionality it tested and all content/copy is reviewed.
Once all signoff and approval are complete the site can launch to the public.
We at Suits Digital take the approach that a website is never complete so ongoing changes are expected even post launch.
A Project Based Approach
So, at Suits Digital we apply a very project based approached to building our clients websites and digital assets. Even from the simple overview and analogy given in this article it is clear there are a number of moving parts in any site build and using this methodology helps deliver the best possible outcome for our clients.
For any more information or to talk to us about your next web project please get in touch with us today.
Kieran Williamson
Director, Suits Digital
“I like to give a basic analogy of building a house to help clients understand how we go about it here at Suits Digital”