Our Web Design Process/Philosophy

At Oneupweb we work with a wide range of industries and client types, which all have different needs, challenges, goals and experiences. What we’ve learned from them over the past couple of years is the process shouldn’t and can’t be the same for everyone. Now we still go through the basic design process, discover, define, design, develop and deploy, but we go through it in a unique way for each client to specifically meet their needs.

Determining the Process

Determining the process you’re going to go through with a client starts during the discovery call. This is the time where you should not only learn about the budget, company, the project and their challenges, but also about whom you would be working with, their experience and the expectations they have for the project.  By getting the answers to these questions you can better determine your approach to the project and what the key deliverables will be. For example, if you are working with someone and this is their first website redesign, you may determine that working through wireframes together may not be appropriate. Wireframes can be pretty abstract and cause confusion for the client.

Another part of our process that can vary is how and when to involve the client in responsive design. For some clients we’ll take a mobile first approach, but for others we’ll start in a more traditional desktop first approach. For the clients that go with a design desktop first, we want to create an process that will help them understand responsive design, but also allow them to see that the mobile experience will still accomplish the projects goals. The deliverables can range from creating mockups of all the pages on multiple devices to simply reviewing the responsive during the development phase.

After we work through design and get into development, we customize the final review process for each client. Some clients want to review and be heavily involved as each page or piece of functionality is developed, while others want to review the site once everything is complete. Determining which again goes back to the expectations set at the beginning. In my experience, if the client has done this once or twice, they’ll want to be a little more hands on then someone that is doing this for the first time.

Improve your Client Experience

Key takeaway?

A website design should not just focus on the user experience, but also the client experience. The process you develop for and with your client will ultimately have an effect on the outcome and success of the project.