Process

We follow a carefully selected set of best practices to ensure the success of our clients’ web development projects. While some simple projects may be able to skip some of these steps and still avoid disaster, we find it extremely helpful to follow each of these phases for all projects — even the simplest ones — to ensure that everything has been considered in preparation for a successful web project.

Analysis of business requirements

To properly understand why a project needs to be executed, we delve into your own business requirements and highlight the essential items for you to consider. Many times, our clients begin working with us having already developed these requirements. If not, we can consult on the development of a full set of business requirements.

Information Architecture

Working from the business requirements, we create an inventory of all content and functionality a web site needs in order to be successful. Then we organize this inventory into a site taxonomy. The taxonomy is an outline of the major and minor sections of your site. Developing a site taxonomy that is understandable to your users is the first step to building a successful web application.

Once the site taxonomy is complete, we develop a wireframe. The wireframe describes in general terms what will appear on each and every page. For example, your homepage could consist of a marketing banner, a paragraph of text describing your organization, and a list of news items. The wireframe also includes which items are most important and which are ancillary. The wireframe contains absolutely no design information. The shapes and colors of your web site are not determined until the design phase. The final wireframe will guide the designer through the next phase of the project.

Design

With an approved wireframe in hand, the designer can determine what unique designs are required to display the required content and functionality, and what should appear on those designs. This ties together a wide range of considerations, best left to our LitmusBox designers: branding requirements, color, shapes, contrast, emotive content and more. During the design phase, we provide comps online for your review and feedback. We design comps in an iterative process, funneling your feedback into the requirements for the next iteration. We guide you through the points you’ll want to consider, and keep track of your preferences. Upon design approval, we’ve got a complete set of snapshots for what your project will look like.

Production

Our production phase is usually divided into 2 parts that work in tandem.

Front end production uses HTML and CSS to code web pages that look like your final design comps. Ensuring pages that look consistent in all the supported browsers is one of our many specialties. Once the display of the pages is produced, we develop client-side functionality using various methods involving AJAX and DHTML.

Back end production builds server interaction into your web application. Database schemas are developed, and code objects are produced to interact with that data. Business logic is built in, to determine what content and functionality should appear in each situation from your use cases. This programming is connected to the front-end to make up the final product.

Post-Production

Once the project has been delivered at the alpha level, the job is to QA the site to perfection. Using the wireframes and a guide, each page is evaluated to ensure it provides the correct content and functionality. Bugs are tracked through our robust issue tracking tools, until every last issue has been resolved and the site is ready to be deployed.