Design Process
Our Plan 9
Every design studio and web developer has a process that begins with research and ends with results. Our strategy goes beyond the norm because it’s heavily informed by clients’ future needs and the role we’ll play in their long-term success. Specifically, we don’t just create websites. We create web presences that embody our clients’ brands and are made to evolve. In other words, once your website goes live you see another aspect of our web studio come alive—one that goes beyond your website and continues to help you succeed into the future.
Gathering the good.
As everything gets more and more virtual, Network9’s approach to planning appears all the more refreshing. We turn off the clock and sit down with you. Before we get into anything else, design included, we get to business. We want to know what you do, your target market, and how you’re going to make money from your project. That settled, we proceed to dig into your business, your brand and your objectives from every conceivable angle. But knowing you is only part of marketing you. So we dissect your competition right down to the tiniest keyword. The research we gather helps build your strategy and design concepts.
Laying it down.
Now that we know you, we lay the groundwork for success. Our team starts with keyword analytics because search terms inform everything we do today. We look at everything and anything you’ll need in the context of the whole site. Are you going to have a twitter feed? Or a blog? What’s the single most important thing for your site to accomplish? What do your visitors need to know? Like a surgical team, we inventory all the components your site needs and we sketch it out to see how it will work as a whole. Yes, we’re talking about content development and site architecture. But the way we do it is equal parts organic and technical; numbers and human insights drive our decisions.
Appealing to the masses, i.e., the design phase.
A lot of people think that a rigid framework and clearly defined parameters hamper creativity. Not so. At Network9, knowing exactly what we have to accomplish frees us to focus our imagination on how best to accomplish the goal at hand. Collaboration with you in this phase leads to success. We create mood boards that present the design elements and their rationale as well as design wire frames with several options for the layouts. We design a color story, imagery and graphics that bring your brand to life. Every element has a purpose and flows from the framework we’ve established.
The doing-it part.
This is the phase that separates the design studios of yesterday from the web studio of tomorrow—you know, us. We take the time to build it right, ensuring you’ll have a site that’s both spectacular and flexible well into the future. We do the hard work up front—the SEO, content optimization, programming and custom widgets that make our WordPress sites easy for you to add to and change. It takes specialized expertise to do build a successful website today—and it takes know-how to manage the content and SEO once it’s launched. Our tight team ensures a smooth transition from design to development because they’ve been involved since the beginning and collaborating throughout the project. You’ll find design, programming, content, project administration and espresso machine all in perfect sync. That means no surprises for you—unless they’re good ones.
Leading the horse to water.
You may have the best website in the world—but what if no one finds it? Our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert works his magic with keywords, page titles and partner linking to assure the horses find their way to the well. Your well. Read more about the SEO process.
The end?
In the end, it’s not about a website; it’s about your web presence. Successful websites today evolve with your needs and with every blog post and tweet. And they have to keep up with the steady stream of new technologies. Twitter may be popular today, but what’s it going to be tomorrow? Because of that, your job is never done—and neither is ours. We’ll help you develop and maintain a content strategy into the future. We’ll be there for you to update your site, add features and fix it if it breaks. We can make your brand consistent in every way you touch your customers—from brochures to trade show displays. That’s why Network9’s framework has no end—except for supporting your continued success.
