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You see a lot of web companies throughout the world, but there are hardly some companies that can see best approaches to complete a web development cycle. I’ll let you know what is the best way to not only complete a web development cycle but to make it successful and to develop a long-term customer relationship. Following things must be kept in mind:
Technical Specifications
Whenever you get a new customer, the first thing you got to do is to make certain you must have a crystal-clear picture regarding the project. Ask at least 10 to 15 questions to your client e.g. Are you going to have a Website design from the scratch or either you going to use a pre-made theme? Who are your competitors? What functionality are you looking for? Do you want a specific design in the mobile? Are you looking for any animations? How the backend will operate? Backend could be very complex or it could be very standard as well. You got to be precise.
If a web design project is one month long, spend a few days discussing the project with your customer. Finalize the technical specifications until you are done with agreeing on how the front end is going to be looked, how the backend is going to be looked, if there is any WP or code igniter that you are going to be used in the backend. And how the admin dashboard is going to be looked.
Quotation
Let your customers know that this is not just a random quotation. Make them realize that it can be broken down into hours and that’s very logical.
Phases of the web design like wire a frame and then graphic design. And there’s going to be a responsive HTML CSS. The HTML CSS could use different platforms as well. It could be SASS with Bootstrap SASS or simple responsive HTML. And there are some other complex HTML frameworks as well. It depends on customers what do they actually want, and all should have been into the consideration while quoting a project.
After you get the customer on board and they are agreed on the pricing, at least get some launch payment to start with or if the project is larger just agree on some milestone basis like the price for the milestone one would be $1,000, take $500 as an advance and the remaining amount after the milestone has been be achieved.
Design
It is the most critical part of the Website design. Designer could be very creative but literally if you want to make the Website design successful in the long run, just only a beautiful site won’t work. You have to work with the designers to design a template as per the SEO matrix. Designers must definitely add an image or properly use H1,H2 or a complete description. There should be images, proper navigation, bread crumbs and follow Google On Page hierarchy etc. Real cool designs must be presented to your customers. And it’s very important that your clients must agree on a specific layout, otherwise it will mess you up pretty badly.
Front end Development
This phase would be about responsive HTML CSS and up about making your Website design compatible across the mobile devices, iPads etc.
Google prioritizes mobile-friendly Website designs over those that are not mobile-friendly in mobile search results.
Back end Development
Once you are done with the front-end development phase, pass it on to the backend development department, so they might start with the WP or Joomla or any other custom frame work. Ensure to the backend department that everything which is on the front end of the Website design must be editable at the backend of the Website design.
Nothing should be hard coded. If you want to win a customer just give them a dashboard which is easier for them to use, to update a picture, text or anything they want to use regularly on the Website design.
Quality Assurance
Pass it on to the QA department and verify that it has been tested across all devices and all recent browsers. Once quality is assured of every single thing, send that Website design to the customer.
Have a one hour session to navigate them how each part of the Website design is going to work, how they can update the Website design. Just give them a month or two as a guarantee that If they will face any problems in the Website design or there will be any bugs around, you will be going to fix them free of charge!
Once the Website design has been completed, confirm that the Website design is on your staging server so there may not be any issues and then you can request your customer for the final payment. Once they deposit the payment, then you can go ahead and transfer the Website design to their server.
Just make sure you mention it on your Website design that you can spend some additional time like two to three hours for transferring the Website design to the server if you are doing that free of charge, but there might come a situation some times when you are going to transfer a Website design but the server is absolutely slow that it might take a day or two or it’s going to take a lot of your time so just put that in your terms and services that you are going to spend four hours of free work in the transferring phase. But if the server is too slow for the customer, you are going to charge a very nominal hourly rate to upload a Website design to the server. Once the Website design has been transferred to the server just make have your QA team to look at that one more time to make sure that every functionality is working fine on the staging server, for example, emails are working fine or somebody fills up the contact form and it is going directly to the customer’s inbox. Just make sure everything is working fine and give them some good customer service.
Getting review is MUST!
If your customer applauds you for doing good work, don’t forget to get a quick review at the end of the Website design. Tell them the hard work your team had done for their project and made every possible effort to please them. So, you should request your customer to leave a positive feedback about good work being done. They can be open but it is preferred to let them know if they can use keywords, for example, if you have done PSD to HTML, let them know that you completed PSD to HTML project and mention that specific project in the description. Our team worked very hard for your project, they were very smart in doing so and I hope you liked the work as well, so if you can review us positively it will be highly appreciated. You can ask them to put it on google, facebook or maybe at yelp. It will help you a lot. It will put you higher in the rankings.
That’s it for now. Love to hear back from you in the comments section.
