Measure twice, cut once.
That was one of Bob Vila's (of This Old House fame) mottos, which appreciates the value of carefully considering something before you do it. Villa held to this motto because lumber can't be un-cut; once you've started sawing through wood, there's no turning back- that is unless you have an endless supply of wood. Well, once you start the development phase of a website, it's just as difficult to start over without significant losses of time and money.
Build the site before you build the site.
This is one of our mottos. After banging our heads against the wall from '95-'00 trying to describe navigation systems for the non-linear web medium by using the inherently linear paper medium, we had an epiphany.
We found that our clients weren't able to give us the feedback we needed until they actually started clicking through the site. So, the answer was simple: We had to build the site twice! The only catch was that we of course couldn't double the budget or timeframe.
Faced with this dilemma, we invented our Grayscreen Prototyping process. Starting in 2000, we began building clickable grayscreen versions of the site that focused solely on the site's information architecture. Our client satisfaction rate immediately soared upon adopting this new practice. To this day, Grayscreen Prototyping is the cornerstone of our business. It is how we ensure we get the site built the right way, the first time.
Newfangled Website Consulting
Many of our clients come to us in need of a great deal of help. They know they need a new website, but they have no idea where they should start or what they should be using their website for--they just know it needs to be better than it is today. For these projects, we begin with a strategic planning phase.
This will ensure that realistic goals are set, a manageable scope, budget and timeline are established, and an appropriate content strategy is planned. Without planning up front, it's likely that some aspect of the project will not go according to the expectations of those involved. In fact, we believe that strategic planning will actually save significant time and money in general by preventing unnecessary revisions and potential road blocks later on.
Planning