It’s time for a new website – yippee! So where do you start? Probably by looking for a website designer and asking for some costs… but how does the process work from our side? We thought we’d take you through a step by step of our process, from start to finish, so you know what to expect.

Enquiry Stage

An enquiry lands in our inbox, social media or by phone. Firstly of all, we get a little excited flutter in our bellies – even after 7 years there’s excitement that someone found your business, and decided that they wanted to ask you for a quote! We’re only human afterall. If the enquiry has enough information, we can send back a quote straight away, or perhaps we’ll ask for a meeting to discuss the requirements and make sure we understand what the business is, and what the website needs to do for it.

Our quote will always include some information on us and our company and then outline our website process (which we’re going to talk about in a minute). We make sure to include what the website cost will include technically, in terms of functionality, and we make a clear breakdown of the costs too. We know that some clients already have hosting accounts, or domain names purchased – we make them clearly seperate in our quote to ensure your flexibility. Once finished, off our quote goes and we sit tight, waiting for a reply.

The Build

So how does our process work? We’ve had a meeting or chat, sent over the quote and now it’s time to get started. At this point, if we haven’t already naturally covered it in our initial conversations, we’d ask for a meeting to discuss your ideas for the website structure (the pages and menu) and also your branding, or ideas of websites you like or don’t like. This gives us a good starting base, knowing how the structure will ideally be, and also looking at websites you like and don’t like – so we don’t go off designing something completely wrong!

We always send over design concepts – or sketches as it were. We actually build these online, so you can explore them interactively on a private link. They are just concepts though, nothing is finalised and anything can be changed. We tend to send over 3 to begin with, and request a feedback meeting to go through them – what you like and don’t like from each, what works well from our ideas and what else you want included. The important thing to note is, we can just go back to the drawing board, or work at pulling all three into one design.

Eventually we reach a point of working from one link – this might be within a week of sending the design concepts or it might be a little longer depending on how much back and forth is needed with design ideas. It’s also really important to consider too how different a website looks with your own content, and so because of that, we are actually always happy to go back to the design and tweak, change, add or remove anything, so that the finished product reflects exactly what you want.

When we’re working off the one link (our development area for your website), we begin to add the pages, any content and functionality. This is where you come in – sending us your content, pictures, videos, documents and so forth. We worth together, in a very iterative process to ensure the site grows and develops. Because we use a development area, you’ll get a link that you can check at anytime to see changes done, keep a track on progress and also, to mull over and make sure you’re happy with the direction.

Going Live

When the website is near completion, we will ask our clients to go through it with a fine toothcomb. Any changes and feedback are welcome, and beforelong, the new website is ready to go live!

If you have asked us to buy your domain name and set up hosting, it’s as easy as signing off the website and letting us do the work. Et voila!

If you already have the domain or hosting, we’ll send over instructions on what to do so we can get the website live, or we’ll ask for access so we can get the site live, before long the new website will launch and we can all celebrate!

And finally, right when the site is live on your domain name, we’ll take a final back up (unless you sign up to our monthly care plans, in which case we do this often), just incase!

Ready?

If you like how our process works, and you’re looking for a new website, we’d be delighted to chat to you! You can contact us on 01970 623 906, info@cambrianweb.com or via our contact page.