Website Design Process

We will contact you via phone or schedule an in-person visit to learn about your business or organization. Our first question will be: “What do you want to accomplish with your website?” This will help us understand basic design and functionality so we can be sure to provide you the most accurate estimate. We will also discuss your brand, business objectives, target audience, keywords and phrases you want to rank high for, assets needed, online marketing plans, timelines for completion, and any budget constraints.

After learning about what you are looking for in a website during the consultation meeting our team will prepare a formal service agreement. This agreement gives you a clear understanding of the project scope; deliverables, design direction, site functionality and features, content needed, any special technical functions, timeline, and cost for services. Once the service agreement is signed by both parties and a down payment is made, we will move on to stage three.

Stage three consists of a series of questions that we cover over the course of several meetings, e-mails, and/or phone calls. Some of these questions, most of which will be covered during the consultation prior to putting together the agreement, include, but are not limited to; what pages do you want on your website (site map), login information to your hosting and domain (we offer these services if you need them), and a determination of what resources you’ll need (copy, plugins, images, etc.) on your website.

While in the design phase, a series of tweaking and approving takes place until both parties are satisfied. This is the time to make any changes. Any changes beyond this point may incur additional costs which will be laid out in the service agreement.

In order to keep your project on track to meet the deadline to launch, timely response during this phase of the process is necessary.

Once we have received the necessary information from the design checklist, we enter the website development stage. At this point our clients will have given us or we will have created enough information to move forward in the development process. The schedule will lay out when you will see the website for the first time, when changes are needed, and additional review phases.

Our search engine marketing (SEM) team will establish the on-site search engine optimization to give your website the necessary foundation that search engines need to find your website using the keywords and phrases discussed in stage one. They will add all the necessary meta data; geo tags, title, description, alt tags, URLs, etc., for optimal on-site SEO.

NOTE: On-site SEO is essential for a strong foundation and is imperative for any online marketing strategy. However, most websites require a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign to compete in its industry for higher ranking in search results.

In stage six, both parties do a final review of the website on both mobile and desktop devices to make sure that all visual and functional features are performing as they should. Final requested changes are made (within the project scope) and once The BLÜ Group – Advertising & Marketing receives the approval from you we schedule a launch date and make the new website live.

Please note: Once you have approved the site and we launch it, any changes to design, structure, or functionality would be considered a change order and may incur an additional cost.

After the launch of your website several things happen. If you are taking advantage of our team to make website updates for you, you can send any updates to our team and we will take care of your requests within 48-72 business hours. If you plan on making changes yourself, we will work with you and teach you how to update the website.

Security is important for your new website. If you host your website with The BLÜ Group – Advertising & Marketing we will handle all updates for you at a set hourly rate. If you don’t, you or someone else will have to handle the on-going security of your website. We strongly recommend that you do not update your website plugins and core files yourself as sometimes there are incompatibilities between the new and old code.

If you use us we will monitor and implement all on-going security updates, patches, and version updates for websites on our host server. If your website is hacked into, this service covers any necessary repairs to your website at no additional cost.

Our La Crosse, Wisconsin based website design and development team is known for high-quality, custom websites. Check out our portfolio to see some of our past projects.