1- CONSULTATION

First we offer a free initial consultation so that we may gain an understanding of your company and your internet marketing needs. We can conduct this consultation via email, chat/messenger, telephone, or in person if you are in the Outer Banks, NC area.

We will determine the general number of pages and technical utilities you’ll need: a feedback or information request form, email links, databases or e-commerce abilities, MLS search capabilities, custom database applications, etc.

2- PROPOSAL

Then we submit a Web Site Development Proposal which will outline the contents to be developed, the graphic and technical requirements, proposed timeline, and the cost of producing your Web site.

We also include a relevant portfolio sampling and additional useful information such as explanations of website features, search engine information, etc.

3- PROJECT INITIATION

Upon your approval of the proposal we require 30% deposit. Along with this invoice, we will send  you a contract. The contract will state the project amount, terms and agreement, and other miscellaneous items. and a signed contract. Upon receipt of your deposit and signed contract, your website is put into our project queue.

4- DOMAIN NAME REGISTRATION

If you have chosen a domain to register for your website, we will register it now to lock in your name.

5- PLANNING AND STRATEGY

We start the process by having you fill out our Website Planner Kit. This gathers information about your company, services, audience, purpose, site goals and more.

We wrote the planner for you, our clients, because successful websites are built on strategy and planning, and an effective plan starts with quality information. To get quality information you need to ask the right questions.

This planner will also give you a full outlook of how you see your future website, and allows us to learn your objectives and goals for your project.

6- RESEARCH

Before any design work is done, we begin our own process of research. Many design companies will skip this step, rushing to get the project completed. Although this can still potentially result in an attractive website for your company, it will not result in the most effective website for your company.

We'll research your company, clients, local and national competition, target market or industry, probable audience and ex-boyfriends and girlfriends (just kidding of course). Seriously though, we will scour all resources to learn as much as possible about your market and goals in order to develop the most appropriate site for you.

7- COLLECTING MATERIALS

Now is the time to start collecting materials for your website. This includes anything that you can provide us with to help us design your website; current and past brochures, logo files, business cards, photos of your staff or place of business, catalogs, text, etc. If you're selling products, we will need photos and product information.

The more information and materials you provide us with, the quicker your project will be completed and the better overall results.

You can email, mail, or drop by any content that you have at any time.

8- SITE ARCHITECTURE and GRAPHICAL LAYOUT

We will then sketch an outline detailing the site architecture. This is a description of the navigation of the site. The primary goal is to let people browse your web site easily, without confusion. A successfully designed navigation scheme must transparently direct a user toward the site's intended objective.

Next we develop graphic elements for the site such as color palettes, fonts, custom graphic images/buttons/headlines, photos and illustrations, etc. We will determine an appropriate Graphical User Interface (GUI) utilizing all of these materials according to the nature of your business.

When all of these elements are decided upon, we will create a preliminary implementation of the site design. Generally the home page and 1-2 other pages are created at this time. We send proofs of those pages as a .jpg image file "snapshot" of what the completed site will look like.

9- REVIEW and FINALIZE DESIGN

You will be asked to critique and discuss the mock up architecture and layout. We offer our clients unlimited design modifications at this stage at no additional cost. We'll go back and forth with drafts, fine-tuning the look and feel of the site until a design is established to be used for your website.

It is much more efficient to get the design accurate before reproducing it onto numerous pages.

10- BACK END/PREPARATION OF MATERIALS

Resizing photos, photo enhancements and optimization, color sampling (for people who want to match a corporate color to their site design), preparing e-commerce and MLS settings and similar tasks are all completed during this phase of the web design process.

11- SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Now? The site's not done! Now is the BEST time to begin thinking about SEO. At Bold Print Design, we do not complete your website and then go back and sprinkle some keywords on top. Skilled web professionals know that to gain competitive search engine placement, Search Engine Optimization must be on your mind the entire web development process.

It starts with careful naming of files within your website. Your page titles (aboutus.html), image names (steve.jpg), alt text tags (text that appears on screen when an image is hovered over with the mouse) and more are all factored into the code of your website, many times with more relevance to search engines and spiders than the text your site visitors read on the page.

It doesn't take much more effort, but you will be surprised by the results. You won't find any pages titled "recipe026.html" when "fresh-fish-recipes.html" will bring much more attention from potential customers searching Google for "fresh fish recipes".

Of course we also make use of meta tags within every page of your site. This is code within the web page that the search engines see but site visitors do not. These include keywords, site description and more ... even a note to the Search Engine Spiders asking them to index your site and come back often!

12- CONTENT

We will next proceed to "put it all together". Combining the graphic elements we've created and collected with text and data your site will feature, we fill the content within the shell that we have created.

13- SPECIAL FUNCTIONALITIES - SCRIPTING AND DATABASE WORK

If you requested any special scripting (contact forms, feedback forms, databases, reservation systems, etc.) we will integrate the scripting into your website.

14- TESTING and DEBUGGING

While your site is being developed, we will host it at a temporary location for your online review. After you have reviewed the website, and everything is in correct order, we will thoroughly review the site ourselves. We will check website load time, browser testing, resolution testing and the overall performance of your site.

15- SITE PUBLISHING - "GOING LIVE!"

When everything looks great, you'll sign off on the project and pay any balance on the account, and we'll transfer the site to your www server location and your site is published for the world to see!

Copyrights covering all content and web site graphics created by Bold Print Design Studio will be transferred to you at this time as well.

You can now start advertising your site, telling friends and business acquaintances, and publishing printed materials with your website address on them.

16- SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION, HOSTING and ONGOING NEEDS

We will submit your website to dozens of search engines and we will resubmit the site every 45 days for a full year after we have completed building your site. The only site we do not include is Yahoo, which is due to the annual fee they charge. We can discuss with you if we think it's a worthy option for your website.

Your first month of hosting is free, e-commerce clients get three months free. Beyond that we can invoice monthly, or you can save 10% by paying quarterly or 25% by paying annually. There are no set up fees, no contracts, and you can cancel at any time.

We can also help you with regular site maintenance, either on an as-needed hourly or regularly schedule recurring basis. Or, we can set you up to make minor text modifications yourself. Let us know what you need to move forward with the most useful website you could have!

ESTIMATED STANDARD TIMELINE:

After receiving your contract and deposit (Step 3) you will typically see your site architecture and mock up of the page layouts (Step 8) within 2 weeks.

From there, we fine tune (Step 9), with each round of revision drafts taking 2-3 working days. We are generally pretty on-target with the first draft, and then it is in your hands. The more
revision requests, the longer this stage can take.

Preparing the files, dropping in the content and going live (Steps 10-14) generally takes one week. Count on slightly longer with MLS functional websites and e-commerce stores, and even longer for custom database applications.