When your company or institution decides that you need to have a professional presence on the Internet and you are looking for a provider to design and program your site or web portal, it is essential that it comply with an adequate production process that guarantees the desired results from the start from the commercial relationship before hiring, to the post-sale support for the respective improvements.
The productive process of a site or web portal requires certain stages that should not be ignored since they are the ones that will guarantee the success of the Internet business solution.
First of all, when you contact a company that provides professional web solutions, a meeting should be held where the commercial representatives of said company know all the aspects related to their requirements, needs and wishes for which they will contract the website. This meeting clarifies the desired technical scope and begins to define what type of technological platform will be required for the desired solution.
The commercial representative, once the information of the required scope has been collected, must meet with the specialists in the areas associated with the production process of Internet business solutions, this includes the Marketing and Content, Web Graphic Design and Web Development departments. (Programming). These specialists must make the calculations of the required technological platforms (hardware and software), as well as the hours of work to satisfy each of the requirements, adapting said platforms to the specific needs of the client.
Once the corresponding calculations have been made, the commercial area together with the supplier's administrative area must create the Offer-Contract that will be presented to the client. This document must cover both the technical scope and the commercial scope accompanied by the terms and conditions of the contract, delving into the details that will allow to clarify in the best possible way the intangible of the service that is hired.
The Offer-Contract must be presented and explained to the client so that any doubts are clarified. Once the entire document has been clarified in accordance with the parties, it will be signed and the corresponding contract will begin.
The subsequent step is to ask the client for the list of inputs that will allow the project to be designed and developed. This ranges from some administrative elements, to design elements, corporate image, target market, base content, product lists with their respective descriptions, databases, user list for emails, definition of domain names to register, elements market differentiators, benefits for users, among others.
Upon receiving the inputs, a Marketing and Content department must review them in detail, accepting what meets the requirements and rejecting what presents ambiguities and / or poor quality as raw material (eg, photographs without sharpness or very low resolution, etc.). Once they are satisfied with all the inputs, the specialists of this department must generate the Sketches (Wireframes) of the main pages of the website to be designed, as well as the navigation structures. This must be done with the appropriate usability criteria according to the objective of the site or web portal. In turn, the Graphic Design and Web Development specialists must participate in such a way that said Sketches do not propose something that cannot be done.
Once the Sketches are ready, they must be issued to the client for review and approval. These sketches must be very well commented so that the client is not confused about the elements that make them up.
After the Sketches are approved, the material must be passed to the Web Graphic Design department in which the images will be created in JPG format that will show for the first time how the website will look on each of its main pages, starting with the page (cover) and including contact forms, product catalogs, service pages, among others. Graphic designs must be created by web design specialists (which is not the same as design for outdoor advertising or print) respecting the graphic identity of the client, including their logo and slogans, etc.In turn, these graphic designs must comply with the marketing concepts that said department has established according to the target audience that will use the portal. Once the graphic designs are ready, they must be issued to the client for review and approval.
After receiving the approval of the designs, the rest of the graphic material of the project is generated. This includes taking pictures, digitally editing input supplies, resizing images, generating headlines and other graphic details, animation elements (if applicable), as well as defining style sheets including choice of fonts, colors, sizes, among others.
The graphic material is provided to the Web Development department who has application programming specialists in charge of installing and configuring the technological platform of hardware and software to use. This includes placing the graphic theme on the platform as well as programming the special and / or advanced modules that are required according to the contracted scope. In turn, the Marketing and Content department must place the content that has been previously adjusted according to the purpose of the website.
Initially, these projects must be mounted on Local Development Servers where programming and internal tests of their correct operation will be carried out. Once this is done, the project must be published on the Production Servers in the Cloud (Internet), placing an initial page that works as a curtain that prevents third parties from viewing the site that has not yet been approved by the client. In turn, internal tests and audits must be carried out to corroborate its proper functioning on production servers.
After this, the link is sent to the customer for online review and approval. In turn, you should be invited to joint tests to certify that everything is working properly.
Finally, after everything has been tested to the satisfaction of the client, the training must be dictated to the personnel who will manage the portal, also providing them with the corresponding documentation and access. By doing this you can remove the curtain, issue it to the search engines for positioning, and start post-sales support through a Customer Support Center.
Success for all…
