Design and Development Process

At Christian-Internet Design, we believe that Project Management is essential to a successful project and relationship between the Customer and our Company. We consider it one of our core competencies.

Project Management Workflow Process

Our Project Manager unifies the team members fulfilling roles of development, design, and documentation and interacts with all three team disciplines to coordinate the project and ensure that all components are completed on time and on budget. The ultimate role for our Project Manager is to see a project’s separate pieces smoothly integrated into the final product to meet our clients’ requirements. While maintaining the cohesiveness to the project process, our Project Manager gathers and organizes client information; creates and manages the project schedule and milestones; maintains meeting minutes and works as a liaison between our Christian-Internet Design team and client team to ensure that the needs of the client and the project are being met. Our Project Manager is a resource to both the client and the project team throughout the project.

Once you’ve purchased a Website Design from us there are steps Our Project Manager will guide you and/or your Company through to complete your Website. Here is a basic outline and explanation of them.

Project Steps:

Some of these steps may vary due to the variety of a clients Project.

1. Information Gathering
2. Planning
3. Design
4. Development
5. Testing and Delivery
6. Maintenance

Phase One: Information Gathering

The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. Many things need to be taken into consideration when the look and feel of your site is created.

This first step is actually the most important one, as it involves a solid understanding of the company and/or ministry it is created for. It involves a good understanding of you – what your business and/or ministry goals and dreams are, and how the web can be utilized to help you achieve those goals.

Christian-Internet Design will start off by asking a lot of questions to help them understand your business and your needs in a web site. These questions will be very important to the building of your website.

Here are some certain things you should consider:

• Purpose
  What is the purpose of the site? Do you want to provide information, promote a service, sell a product… ?
• Goals
  What do you hope to accomplish by building this web site? Two of the more common goals are either to make money or share information.
• Target Audience
  Is there a specific group of people that will help you reach your goals? It is helpful to picture the “ideal” person you want to visit your web site. Consider their age, sex or interests – this will later help determine the best design style for your site.
• Content
  What kind of information will the target audience be looking for on your site? Are they looking for specific information, a particular product or service, online ordering…?

Christian-Internet Design uses a comprehensive Planning Form which will guide you through this process. Click here to see Interview Worksheet.

Phase Two: Planning

Using the information gathered from phase one, it is time to put together a plan for your web site. This is the point where a site map is developed. The site map is a list of all main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics, if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on the site, and is essential to developing a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. The end-user of the web site – aka your customer – must be kept in mind when designing your site. These are, after all, the people who will be learning about your service or buying your product. A good user interface creates an easy to navigate web site, and is the basis for this.

During the planning phase, Christian-Internet Design will also help you decide what technologies should be implemented. Elements such as interactive forms, ecommerce, flash, etc. are discussed when planning your web site.

Phase Three: Design

Drawing from the information gathered up to this point, it’s time to determine the look and feel of your site.

Target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration. A site aimed at teenagers, for example, will look much different than one meant for a financial institution. As part of the design phase, it is also important to incorporate elements such as the company logo or colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site.

Christian-Internet Design will create mock-up designs for your web site. This is typically a .jpg image of what the final design will look like. Often times you will be sent an email with the mock-ups for your web site. Christian-Internet Design will allow you to view your project throughout the design and development stages. The most important reason for this is that it gives you the opportunity to express your likes and dislikes on the site design.

In this phase, communication between both you and Christian-Internet Design is crucial to ensure that the final web site will match your needs and taste. It is important that you work closely with Us, exchanging ideas, until you arrive at the final design for your web site.

Then development can begin…

Phase Four: Development

The developmental stage is the point where the web site itself is created. At this time, Christian-Internet Design will take all of the individual graphic elements from the Mock-Ups and use them to create the actual, functional site.

This is typically done by first developing the home page, followed by a “shell” for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web site. Once the shell has been created, Christian-Internet Design will take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the appropriate areas.

Elements such as interactive contact forms, flash animations or ecommerce shopping carts are implemented and made functional during this phase, as well.

This entire time, Christian-Internet Design will continue to make your in-progress web site available to you for viewing, so that you can suggest any additional changes or corrections you would like to have done.

On the technical front, a successful web site requires an understanding of front-end web development. This involves writing valid XHTML / CSS code that complies to current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible.

This is tested in the next phase…

Phase Five: Testing and Delivery

At this point, Christian-Internet Design will attend to the final details and test your web site. We will test things such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, as well last testing for last minute compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers), ensuring that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser versions.

Christian-Internet Design is well versed in current standards for web site design and development. The basic technologies currently used are XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). As part of testing, Christian-Internet Design will check to be sure that all of the code written for your web site validates. Valid code means that your site meets the current web development standards – this is helpful when checking for issues such as cross-browser compatibility as mentioned above.

Once you give Christian-Internet Design your final approval, it is time to deliver the site. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program is used to upload the web site files to your server. Christian-Internet Design offers domain name registration and web hosting services as well. Once these accounts have been setup, and your web site is uploaded to the server, the site will be put through one last run-through. This is just precautionary, to confirm that all files have been uploaded correctly, and that the site continues to be fully functional.

To view Christian-Internet Design Hosting plans visit: Design hosting plans  

This marks the official launch of your site, as it is now viewable to the public.

Phase Six: Maintenance

The development of your web site is not necessarily over, though. One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to offer new content or products on a regular basis. Christian-Internet Design will be more than happy to continue working together with you, to update the information on your web site. Christian-Internet Design offers maintenance packages at reduced rates, based on how often you anticipate making changes or additions to your web site.

View Our Maintenance Service plans at: website maintenance plans

If you prefer to be more hands on, and update your own content, there is something called a CMS (Content Management System) that can be implemented to your web site. This is something that would be decided upon during the Planning stage. With a CMS, Christian-Internet Design will utilize online software to develop a database driven site for you.

A web site driven by a CMS gives you the ability to edit the content areas of the web site yourself. You are given access to a back-end administrative area, where you can use an online text editor (similar to a mini version of Microsoft Word). You’ll be able to edit existing content this way, or if you are feeling more adventurous, you can even add new pages and content yourself. The possibilities are endless!

It’s really up to you as far as how comfortable you feel as far as updating your own web site. Some people prefer to have all the control so that they can make updates to their own web site the minute they decide to do so. Others prefer to hand off the web site entirely, as they have enough tasks on-hand that are more important for them to handle directly.

That’s where the help of a Christian-Internet Design comes in, once again, as We can take over the web site maintenance for you – one less thing for you to do is always a blessing.

Other maintenance type items include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SES (Search Engine Submission). This is the optimization of you web site with elements such as title, description and keyword tags which help your web site achieve higher rankings in the search engines. The previously mentioned code validation is something that plays a vital role in SEO, as well.

There are a lot of details involved in optimizing and submitting your web site to the search engines –This is a very important step, because even though you now have a web site, you need to make sure that people can find it!

Christian-Internet Design offers Professional and Personal comprehensive SEO and SES services. See Christian-Internet Design SEO Services at: SEO-Packages or more information.

The Bottom Line

All in all, Christian-Internet Design will work closely with you during these processes in making your website. A good working relationship with Christian-Internet Design, including an open line of communication, is important to ensure that We are creating a successful web site that will help your business grow.