Where Technology and Creativity Collide

The interactive space is defined and controlled by an ever-growing list of technologies — HTML 5, CSS3, Javascript, CMS, MySQL, Flash, JQuery, Actionscript, PHP, AJAX, and Apache. Sorting through the confusion and finding the right mix is the key to creating a solid foundation for any development project. These days, your website is probably the biggest and best branding tool you have. So it deserves a lot of thought, a lot of love and a lot of care - which is why we've made website development such an important part of our business.

Of course, to our way of thinking (and you may have noted a recurring theme here) - it all comes down to finding the appropriate process. And we believe you'll find our holistic approach to website development surprisingly unique and refreshingly logical. So if you’re looking for someone to develop a soup-to-nuts website or to supe up something you already have, you're really going to want to read on.

(Caution: If you’re not a certified web geek you may want to grab a caffeinated beverage first.)

1. Discovery

Discovery: Before uncovering your website needs, we begin by discovering your business needs. This discovery process includes a detailed audit of competitive sites, current site evaluation, concise descriptions of current and future site users, clear definitions of site expectations, technical evaluations of programming platforms and required integration with internal IT functions. The ultimate goal of this key phase is to come away with agreement on a clear direction and vision for your site.

2. Site Architecture

The architecture is the backbone of your site, and no amount of flashy graphics can make up for anemic website underpinnings. Point B will develop a detailed site architecture indicating the organization, hierarchy and navigation of every section of your website, and present multiple and unique site map options. The final site architecture, along with the corresponding content outline, will make up the blueprint for the entire website moving forward.

Upon approval of site architecture, Point B creates a detailed content outline keyed against your website site map. The outline will include detailed content description - including copy intent, estimated copy length, visual requirements and functional mandates - for each section of the website.

3. Website and UI Design

This is the visual design phase of your site. AKA - the eye candy. Here, we design multiple, but distinct design options. Each option exemplified through both a home page and typical interior page layout. This way, you're given the opportunity to really see how design elements pull through. And once we've finalized your design, you'll be amazed at how quickly the rest comes together.

4. Development

With the site's design and UI approved, Point B then uses those graphics to create the functional templates for the site. Designs move from static visuals to functional XHTML templates. Graphics are sliced and optimized for web delivery, style-sheets and content formatting are coded for the entire site and the visual structure of the site content is finalized. At this phase, we also develop the functional coding such as JavaScript and AJAX elements within the site. All of this work goes through rigorous testing to assure cross-browser compatibility and adherence to W3C standards for accessibility.

While the front end of the site and its content are being defined, we then begin the backend development of the site by integrating the created page templates into the CMS framework. At this time, we also modify the CMS interface to provide the desired functionality relative to the specific page templates.

Once the CMS is built out, we then begin integrating content. During this time we will also plug-in SEO relevant components such as page titles, Meta descriptions and Meta keywords.

5. Testing and Deployment

We test for functionality and continuity across all major platforms and browsers. Given the different support levels for more modern techniques using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3, some browsers are just incapable of properly displaying some intended outputs. 'Graceful Degradation' becomes the solution when the intended output is not achievable in older browsers. This principle still acknowledges that not all modern techniques will be fully compatible. When this incompatibility exists the browsers still display the content in an accessible, visually consistent manner. Upon completion of the content integration and functional testing, the site will be deployed to an identified hosting environment.