A detailed look at the BS LLC website design and development process.
Process Overview:
Onboarding > Design > Quoting > Development > Implementation > QA > Client Review > Deployment > Ongoing Support > Site Completion
01. Website Onboarding
Overview
BS LLC's onboarding process benefits businesses by ensuring clear and effective communication, minimizing unexpected issues, creating a user-friendly experience, and providing a safe and reliable platform. Communication protocols facilitate a smooth project flow, while the project charter and risk register ensure project success within budget and timeline. During the website goal setting process, user needs and client-team goals are taken into consideration to drive business success. A tech stack audit is conducted to optimize a technology infrastructure that supports business objectives and drives growth. By utilizing BS LLC's website development process, businesses can create a website that not only meets user needs but also aligns with their overall business strategy, resulting in increased traffic, engagement, and ultimately success.
Process & Deliverables
Communication Protocols: Our first meeting is to establish a communication framework for clear and effective communication. During this meeting, BS LLC collects login credentials for relevant platforms and utilizes the DARCI model to clarify roles and responsibilities among stakeholders. This model ensures that all parties clearly understand who is responsible for what tasks, facilitating a smooth project flow. Additionally, the communication framework onboarding process establishes communication frequency, ensuring that all parties are up-to-date on project progress and any changes that may occur.
Project Charter & Risk Register: BS LLC offers a Project Charter and Risk Register process step for website development projects. The Project Charter outlines the project's scope, objectives, and timelines to align stakeholders. The Risk Register identifies potential risks to mitigate them and ensure the project's success within budget and timeline. This process promotes transparency and effective communication, ensuring all stakeholders understand potential risks and their impact on the project. Together we work to solve high-impact risks collaboratively before the project begins. This process allows businesses to ensure their website development project meets their goals.
Website Goals: BS LLC's process offering for website development includes inbound mapping, digital traffic analysis, and consideration of business goals. Inbound mapping involves understanding the target audience and their preferences, accomplished through extensive user research. Digital traffic analysis measures user engagement and website performance, ensuring the website is optimized for user needs. Additionally, the process considers business goals for the platform, ensuring that the website is designed to meet these objectives. By incorporating these elements into the process, businesses can create a user experience that is engaging, user-friendly, and meets the needs of their target audience, ultimately driving business success.
Tech Stack Audit: BS LLC provides a thorough audit process to facilitate the correct infrastructure for user experience and necessary website integrations. The information gathered during the audit process is carefully analyzed to ensure that the technology infrastructure is optimized for the needs of the business and its target audience. In some cases, this may involve recommending reducing the tech stack to improve website performance and minimize the risk of security vulnerabilities. By utilizing the results of the tech stack audit process, businesses can create a technology infrastructure that supports their website goals, user experience, and overall business objectives, ultimately driving success and growth.
Need support with the development of a Customer Relationship Management system? Learn about the benefits of CRM and the implementation process here.
02. Website Design
Overview
The website design process involves creating a clear and effective sitemap, user experience (UX), and user interface (UI) design and defining the modules and content that will be included on the website. This process is crucial in creating a website that is visually appealing but also user-friendly and intuitive, ensuring a positive user experience that can help drive traffic and conversions. Planning and designing your website carefully allows you to set your online presence up for success.
Process & Deliverables
Presentation 1: Sitemap & UX: As part of the website design process, creating a clear sitemap and user experience (UX) design are essential deliverables. A sitemap provides a hierarchical structure of all pages on the website, allowing for a clear overview of the website's organization and navigation. UX design creates a positive user experience by ensuring the website is easy to navigate, intuitive, and visually appealing. By developing a well-designed sitemap and UX, you can ensure your website is user-friendly and easy to use, providing visitors with a positive experience that can increase engagement and conversions.
Before moving to User Interface Design, the client is required to sign off on the User Experience design. This means that any changes to the behavior of the UX will be treated as a change request.
Presentation 2: UI or User Interface Design: Designing a high-quality user interface (UI) is an important milestone deliverable in website design. However, before beginning the UI design, brand standards must be well-defined to ensure consistency across all branding efforts. Additionally, the client must complete and sign off on a UX design before moving forward with the UI design. This ensures that the UI is designed with the user's needs and preferences in mind and that the design is cohesive with the overall website structure and branding. By completing a thorough UX and following established brand standards, the UI design can effectively communicate the client's brand message and provide an engaging and intuitive user experience.
Module Specification: Module specification is the phase of website development where the technical aspects of each module are defined in detail. This includes specifying the functions of each module, determining the placement and behavior of CTAs, outlining integrations with third-party tools, defining animation behavior, and more. The Module Definition phase is critical to ensuring that the website functions as intended and meets the client's and their users' needs. By thoroughly defining each module's technical aspects, BS LLC can ensure that the final product meets the client's expectations and performs as intended.
Content Creation: Content creation is a critical component of website development that involves developing engaging and informative copy and visual elements, such as photos and videos. The content should align with the brand standards, ensuring consistency across all marketing channels. The copy should be clear, concise, and tailored to the target audience, highlighting the business's unique value proposition. Photo development involves selecting and editing visually appealing images relevant to the website's content. If photo, video, and copy are not included in the development contract, it will be incumbent on the client to produce all assets.
Before we move on, it is required to complete the following actions.
Content Completion: Before we move to a design and freeze and subsequent process steps, it is required to complete all content creation needs required for the website
Design Freeze: The Design Freeze milestone is an important stage in the website design process, marking the point at which the design of the user interface (UI) and module functionality is finalized, and no further changes can be made. With client signature, all design elements and functionality have been agreed upon, and development work can begin. It is important for clients to thoroughly review and provide feedback on the UI and module functionality before the Design Freeze milestone to ensure that their vision and expectations are met. After the Design Freeze milestone, any changes to the design or functionality may result in additional time and cost, also known as a Change Request.
Overview
At BS LLC, we understand that every web development project is unique, and we take a tailored approach to each project based on its specific requirements. This approach allows us to provide our clients with the best possible solutions that meet all their objectives and requirements. Depending on the project's needs, we may internally build or reach out to our preferred development partners with specific technical expertise.
Our process for quoting website development provides accurate and competitive quotes based on clients' specific requirements. We produce quotes with multiple vendors based on UI and module schema documents outlining the website's requirements. Vendors can provide accurate quotes, demonstrating a breakdown of tasks by groupings and including development and go-live timelines. Additionally, vendors recommend ideal CMS ecosystems for website development. This streamlined process allows our clients to choose the most suitable vendor for their needs, resulting in a cost-effective development process that meets their requirements. Our expertise enables businesses to confidently choose a vendor that delivers the best value for their investment and ensures that their website meets their unique needs and objectives.
Process & Deliverables
Presentation of Quotes: BS LLC's meeting with clients involves presenting multiple quotes from vendors to develop the website based on UI and module schema documents. During the meeting, we review the breakdown of tasks by groupings, development, and go-live timelines to clearly understand the project's expected timeline and costs. This process allows clients to choose the most suitable vendor, ensuring a successful website development process.
Value Engineering Process: Should the costs be too high, our value engineering process involves evaluating the website's architecture, modules, integrations, and complex web behaviors, such as animations, to identify areas where costs can be reduced. This process optimizes the website's functionality and eliminates unnecessary expenses, ensuring businesses can achieve their website development goals within budget while maximizing their return on investment.
Before we move on, it is required to complete the following actions:
Website Production Signoff: Website Development Signoff is a critical step in the website development process that involves reviewing and approving the project quote to ensure alignment with the business's goals. Any website design changes after signoff will result in a change request. This process avoids unexpected costs and delays during development, ensuring the website meets the business's requirements upon completion.
Website Hosting & Domain Hosting: Website hosting refers to the service of storing and publishing a website on a server that can be accessed via the internet.
You can learn more about Hosting here.
Learn more about our Hosting & Security Options
04a. Development
Overview
The website development process involves coding and engineering based on the sitemap, user interface (UI), and module functionality. The development team is also responsible for building integrations, payment gateways, and backend UI engineering. Testing and debugging are critical in ensuring the website is fully functional and ready for launch. Following this structured website development process, businesses can create a website that meets their needs, ultimately driving business success.
Delegation of Responsibilities
BS LLC will provide the following:
- Design files (Figma files, fonts, logos & brand assets)
- Functional files (website architecture, sitemap, module specification, integrations, redirects, taxonomies)
- Technical Website Information stored securely in Dashlane (Hosting Environment, Domain Environment, Server, Integrations, Social)
The Third-Party Developer will provide the following:
- Staging site on BS Hosting
- Tracking against timeline
- Biweekly sprint meeting with BS LLC
- Initial Quality Assurance against provided project files, site to be delivered at least 85% accuracy
What’s Necessary to Move Forward
Development is a co-path process with implementation. Completing implementation is necessary to move to Quality Assurance (QA).04b. Implementation
Overview
Website implementation is a crucial process that involves transforming a website's design, copy, and visual assets into a fully functional online platform. If the implementation is not included in the scope of work and is managed by the client, training will be provided to enable them to update content in the future. However, this can be time-consuming and laborious, requiring careful attention to detail. Clients should proactively manage the implementation process by working it into their schedules to prevent delays. Additionally, clients should report any bugs or issues they encounter in utilizing the CMS. By proactively managing the implementation process and promptly addressing any issues, a website can be launched within the designated timeline, meeting the client's objectives and providing an optimal user experience for visitors.
Time Estimates
The time it takes to implement content into a CMS can vary depending on various factors such as the complexity of the design, the amount of content, and the functionality required.
Below is an estimate to help plan internally:
- Small 8-10 page website: approximately 40-80 hours for content implementation.
- Medium 20-50 page website: approximately 80-160 hours for content implementation.
- Large website with more than 100 pages: approximately 160-240 hours for content implementation.
Delegation of Responsibilities
If the content implementation is included in your contract, BS LLC will manage all content implementation.
If it is not included in your contract, BS LLC will provide training videos for use of modules and the client is responsible for usage.
05. Quality Assurance “QA”
Overview
The Quality Assurance (QA) stage is essential to website development, ensuring the website meets the required standards and specifications. BS LLC conducts the QA process by testing various aspects of the website, such as functionality, usability, compatibility, and security, to identify and fix any issues or bugs. This process involves a range of tools and techniques, such as manual testing, automated testing, and user testing, to assess the website's performance. Once the QA team has identified any issues, we work with the development team to fix them and ensure the website functions as intended. The QA period typically lasts for three weeks unless otherwise negotiated. It is crucial to ensure a high-quality website that meets the client's objectives and provides an optimal user experience for visitors.
- Learn more about our Technical Site Audit
- Learn more about our Security Audit
06. Client Review
Overview
The Client Review process in web development is a crucial stage that ensures the final website meets the client's expectations. At BS LLC, we hand off a completed staging site to the client for review, giving them a period of three weeks to identify and produce bugs against the design specifications. Any development requests outside the scope of the initial agreement will be treated as a change request and must be signed off by the BS LLC team before implementation. This process is managed through the client's customer portal, providing a streamlined way for clients to communicate their feedback and manage the review process efficiently. By working closely with clients during the review process and addressing any issues promptly, we ensure a successful outcome that meets the client's objectives and provides an optimal user experience for visitors.
What’s Necessary to Move Forward
Client Deployment Approval: the final stage of web development where the client approves the completed website for deployment to the live server.
07. Deployment / Go Live
Overview
Website Deployment is the final stage of the website development process, where the completed website is launched and made available to the public. It is essential to have hosting, security, and support packages decided in advance of website deployment to ensure that the website is secure, backed up, and well-supported after deployment.
Deployment typically occurs at night or over weekends to reduce the impact of potential downtime. Our team works to ensure a seamless transition to the live server, minimizing any disruption to the website's availability. We ensure that the website is fully tested, optimized, and meets all client specifications before deployment. Once the client has provided approval for deployment, we work to ensure a smooth and efficient launch. After deployment, if you have a support contract, we continue to monitor the website's performance and provide ongoing support to ensure that it remains secure, up-to-date, and fully functional.
What’s Necessary
If your website or your domain is not hosted with BS LLC, we will need to work with your tech team to coordinate deployment weeks in advance to ensure there is a smooth transition.
Additionnaly, in anticipation of this long awaited moment, it is important to communicate timelines with key project stakeholders.
Ongoing Support & Security
Overview
Ongoing support and security services are an essential part of website maintenance, ensuring that the website remains secure, up-to-date, and fully functional after deployment. At BS LLC, we offer ongoing support and security services to clients, including regular updates to software and plugins, backup and restore services, and security monitoring to detect and prevent potential threats. Our team also provides technical support to address any issues that may arise and ensure that the website continues to meet the client's objectives and provide an optimal user experience for visitors. By engaging in ongoing support and security services, clients can have peace of mind knowing that their website is in good hands and that any issues will be addressed promptly, minimizing downtime and potential disruptions.
Our Security & Support Services
- Website Solutions: Hosting, Security & More
- Security Solutions
- Ongoing Web Support Solutions