Web design doesn't have to be mysterious
At Pancake, we put a great deal of time and effort into refining our processes to make sure your project goes as smoothly and efficiently as possible. We're also all about demystifying these processes so that you understand them as clearly as we do. Check out our design/development process below to understand a little better how we'll go about building your new site!
ROADMAPPING
No project exists without a problem, and it's our objective to solve yours. In order to do this in the best way possible for you, we first need to understand you and your business better, and to explore the core issue you're looking solve. Conducting a roadmapping session helps us discover what the issue is, what your overarching business goals are, and how to create a solution to the problem that furthers those goals. When we're done, you’ll come away with a concrete understanding of the full situation, a detailed plan for the project, and a clear idea of the next steps you'll want to take.
DESIGN
Here, we’ll work closely with you to build out a “look & feel” for your new site. Depending on your budget and the look you’re going for, we either build out custom design mockups, or pull in our from our pre-designed library of design mockups.
For designs from our library, we’ll provide several sample designs which you can refine, and finally choose the look & feel that you most prefer.
If you’d prefer to go the custom route instead, we’ll work closely with you to design and refine one set of mockups based on the design direction you specify. We’ll have up to three rounds of revisions here, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get things dialed in just the way you want them.
PROTOTYPING
Using Pancake's proprietary CMS Foundation, we'll start building out a working example of your new website’s architecture and layouts using FPO (for placement only) example copy and images. By the time we're finished, you'll be able to navigate through your site, interacting with working functionality, menus, and forms as we build them.
DESIGN & FUNCTIONALITY REVISIONS
At this point, we'll schedule a time to review the prototype layouts and styles we've built, and decide what revisions need to be made in order to ensure everything is perfect for launch.
QUALITY ASSURANCE
In this phase, we put the site through its paces to make sure everything's running smoothly. We'll add in one round of finalized content, squash any bugs as they reveal themselves, and polish the look & feel of the site to a high gloss.
TRAINING
For Pancake, this part of the project is always the most exciting. In this phase we hand over control and empower you with the tools and skills you need to edit and build your site. We put as much effort into the dashboard and CMS as we do in crafting the front end of your site, to make sure that your content management experience is as effortless as possible.
LAUNCH
Now that we've added all content, performed our quality assurance, and tested the functionality of the site, we'll create a launch plan to archive the old version of the site and push the new one into production. We'll make sure analytics are up and running, as well as ensure that your site has been submitted to the major search engines. If you have an existing site, we'll also set up 301 redirects to make sure you don't lose any already-established search engine rankings.
MAINTENANCE
Congratulations! Your site is live and off to a great start! To make sure that everything keeps running smoothly, we’ll make sure that it gets the love and maintenance every website needs. We’ll perform security audits, theme/template updates, plugin updates, and core CMS updates to make sure your site stays secure and running so your visitors can look you up any time.