Phase 1. Gathering Information: Purpose, Main Goals, and Target Audience

Aim

• Establish the goals you want to achieve from your website. This is the strategic plan!
• Determine your target audience - keeping humans at the center of all strategy, design and development is key to success.

What do we do?

• Send you a Website or Webapp thinkathon
• Conduct UX research
• Determine stakeholder groups and their goals
• Set a creative direction for your site: this includes visual and literary elements

What do you need to do:

• Workshop things with us
• Share brand guidelines
• Share content like photos, awards, or any news clips you would like to highlight on your website

Result

We co-create a detailed plan with you: efforts, milestones, timelines, and costs. A detailed plan based on this pre-development data can protect you from spending extra resources on solving unexpected issues such as design changing or adding the functionality that wasn’t initially planned.

Estimated time

7 working days

Phase 2. Planning: Sitemap and Wireframe Creation

Aim

We translate your goals into a tactical plan

What do we do

• Co-create a sitemap

  Sitemap created by The Data Duck describes the relations between the main areas of your website. Such representation helps you understand how usable the final product will be. The main reason behind the sitemap creation is to build a human-friendly and easy to navigate website.
  Once the Sitemap is agreed upon, we move onto creating wireframes.

• Creating Wireframes

  Wireframes are an important communication tool in any web or app project. It gives you, The Data Duck designers and our developers, an opportunity to walk through the structure of the website without getting sidetracked by design elements such as colors and images. Never miss this step!

What do you do

• Share any information we missed out on Phase 1
• Go through the plans before signing off on them

Result

Complete clarity before design and development begins.

Estimated time

1 to 5 weeks

Phase 3. Design: Page Layouts, Review, and Approval Cycle

Aim

A design that is easy on the eyes and on the attention span!

What do we do?

Design keeping the stakeholders and target audience in mind.

During the design phase, your website takes shape. This is usually the most exciting phase for everyone involved. All the visual content is placed according to the sitemap and wireframes we co-created in Phase 2. Once again, all the info The Data Duck gathered through the first phase is crucial for successful design.

Result

A design that is primed for a communication layer

Estimated time

1-3 weeks

Phase 4. Content Writing and Assembly

Aim

Create clear communication that builds your brand and is structured for digital consumption

What do we do?

• Follow the literary style we agreed upon in Phase 1. Is your brand language formal and traditional? Upbeat and young?
• Go through the literary content shared by you and bring it down to its essence
• Write in a way that your website visitors achieve their goals. We do this by writing the text that guides users as they navigate and interact with your website.

Result

Communication that is compelling and easy to understand. The only person who reads every word on your website is you! The Data Duck writes User Experience copy for digital devices and behavior.

Estimated time

1-2 weeks

Phase 5. Coding

Aim

Bringing the communication and design to life using clean code.

We support the following resolutions and browsers

Resolutions for:

Desktop

• 1366x768
• 1920x1080
• 1536x864
• 1440x900

Tab

• 768x1024
• 1280x800

Mobile

• 375x812
• 375x667

Browsers we support

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari

What you do

Be patient!

Result

A functioning website that’s ready to be tested.

Estimated time

2 to 3 weeks

Phase 6. Testing, Review, and Launch

Aim

Ensuring the website is running smoothly and functioning to achieve the goals we set in Phase 1

What do we do?

• Every single link is tested by The Data Duck testing team to make sure that nothing is broken.
• The Data Duck testing team tests every form, every script, use spell-checking software to find possible typos. Use code validators to check if your code follows the current web standards.

What do you do?

Test the website - go through it as if you were seeing it for the first time.

Result

We use File Transfer Protocol software to move your website from a test server to a live server. After this, we run a final check to ensure all files have been installed correctly.

Estimated time

1 to 2 weeks

Phase 7. Maintenance: Opinion Monitoring and Regular Updating

Aim

Ensuring your site is always working fine and everyone is satisfied. A website is more of a service than a product. It’s not enough to just create a website.

What do we do?

• We install tools like Google Analytics (free) and listening tools (paid services like Konnect Insights)
• The feedback system will allow us to detect possible problems your users face. We will let you know what tweaks we think will optimize your website.
• If your website is old, we may need to update the technology it was built on to decrease security risks and ensure it’s running swiftly.

What do you do

Assess whether you want to optimize your site and let us know what changes you want.

Result

You show up in the world in the best way, every day. The opening night isn’t a distant memory, but a commitment to quality that you deliver to your stakeholders always.

Estimated time

Ongoing