BIT Studios Web Design & Development Process

I. Discovery Phase

BIT Studios will define the stakeholder’s goals, identify the site audience and their goals, and research your industry and competitors.

• Stakeholder Goals Outline - Define the goals and results that the Stakeholders want from the website.
• Audience List - Define who the various audiences are for the website.
• Audience’s Goals Outline by Audience Type - Define what your audience wants from your site and what results they expect.
• Personas - Create Personas for each audience type outlining demographics, goals and results each persona expects.
  
• Competitor Research - Because the competition is targeting a similar demographic, it is important to find out what they offer. BIT will review what the competition is doing to capture their audience, and identify what does and does not work. This will offer more clues about how to reach the your target audience.

II. Definition Phase

Taking our research and analysis collected during the Discover Phase, BIT will document and prototype out your website in advance of design or development to ensure best possible results for lead generation and conversion.

• Site Map Outline - After analyzing your current Web site and its competitors, BIT Studios will work with you to create an initial high-level site map that will outline the major sections and subsections of the site.
• Critical & Secondary Elements - Based on all of the information gathered, BIT Studios will put together a list of elements that are necessary to have in the main sections of the Web site.
• Requirements Documentation - We will outline the business and technical requirements for your project including use cases where necessary.
• Information Architecture - This is the structural design of information that expresses the concept of this information used within a complex system (i.e. web development, UI, database development, programming, etc.)
• Search Engine Optimization - We make sure that the future site is structured in a search engine friendly way and all the on-page elements that are important for search engines are in place.
• User Interface Design - The importance of good user interface design can be the difference between a products acceptance or rejection in the marketplace.
• Conversion Optimization - Sometimes known as ‘post click marketing’, conversion optimization is the psychology of structuring, designing, and word smithing your site in such a way that a much higher percentage of your site’s visitors will convert to a lead, by either calling, emailing or filling out your contact form. BIT Studios is fanatical about making websites that produce results.
• Prototype Live on the Web - Wire frames will be delivered as an Axure project, with HTML pages published from Axure to BIT Studios hosting. Available for review online.
  Sample Prototypes:
  http://proto.bitstudios.com/ia/
  http://proto.bitstudios.com/esi/
  http://proto.bitstudios.com/lawproto/
  http://proto.bitstudios.com/music/community/
  http://proto.bitstudios.com/ms/

III. Design Phase

BIT Studios will create the overall graphical site design concept and integrate it into the wire frame and site architecture, with the conversion optimization strategy in mind.

Deliverables:

• Concept Creation - This is the creative process of design, and the overall theme of your website – the look-and-feel aspects that include color schemes, graphics, font type, etc. A custom, aesthetic design will be crafted that will exhibit your image of professionalism and credibility.
• Inner Templates Designs - Once the Master Design Concept is approved BIT will take that and extend it throughout all of the templates that have been identified during the wire frame prototyping steps.
• Design comps will be provided for review until a final design concept is approved.
  Web Design Portfolio

IV. Development Phase
All programming is done during this phase, as well as testing. At this point, your site will be deployed to a test environment for review and polishing.

Deliverables:

• Site Programming - The site pages will be programmed to be W3C compliant xhtml.
• Cross Browser & OS Compliance - The site will be programmed to support all major browsers on both Windows & MAC.
• Content Management System - A robust, easy-to-use Content Management System will be integrated into the designs in order for the site admin to be able to make changes to the site without any technical assistance.
  

V. Deployment Phase

BIT Studios will deploy the your website into its hosting site, engage in repeat testing, and provide ongoing maintenance.

• Prepare Hosting Environment
• Final Testing
• Live Website tested and polished.