Over the years I have been in situations to where a process was in place and worked, well kinda sorta, places that had no process and scared me to death and places that I developed process but in general as the business of interactive is constantly evolving the process to which one works in the business will need to evolve as well. But there can be a basic guideline process that for the larger more profitable and resource allocating projects and through careful planning be designed special just for that initiative. This process will scale up or down and be defined as the project is scoped initially, lets jump right in... remember you are clay we mold ourselves to our clients and their needs following our proficiency and expertise, as does the process so this is just a guideline you may have seen many be inspired to create your own...
First item of business is looking at these in "Phases":
Discovery/Ideation Phase
So we have met initially with the client responded to the RFP etc ... but we feel we will need a bit of time to get a tight grip on the project and our approach. We do a "Discovery Phase", this allows time to get our bearings, gather the best resources for the project and begin to create an idea and vision of what we can deliver to the client. This would include for example: the receiving of materials from the client to review and study, creating a client facing Business Requirements Document (BRD), conducting a competitive analysis, do user profiling, create client facing Technical Requirements Document (TRD), plan of communications i.e. who are the point resources between the client and you? and a preliminary Project Schedule ( this needs as detailed as one can get at this point as this is when the client receives, locks into their mindset and will more than likely hold you to it. Besides, the client is paying for this "Discovery" phase, if I were the client I would want the timeline close to reality so I could get a line on my internal parallels that may be inline with this project. So with timeline and milestones within the timeline, be accurate in working with your Project Manager and the rest of the team to be on target with this large detail.
There is also a part of this Phase I would like to separate and that is "Strategy". Due to the differences of every project, for example a website about a staffing agency vs. a major airline, although the interactive principles are the same the strategy in which we engage the user/users will certainly be different. Competitive analysis of other major sites etc will shine some light on what is being done and not being done to give the team a good start. Strategy would include more or less the following: Identify the Goals and Objectives, define user needs of the site (there may be multiple User Interaction Paths), Research the Market, Benchmark Competitive Sites and lastly separate this part of the document on the Strategy and how it will impact the goals and objectives and this must be a client facing and be sure the client completely understands the proposed strategy.
Planning Phase ( Ideas are evaluated and turned into projects)
Strategy will continue in the "Planning Phase" at times, as the team will come upon new revelations as they all begin to come together and work as one on the project. This Phase will also include other task such as, making sure we have the correct team assigned, this gives us one more chance if anything changes in Discovery to switch around some resources who may have more experience. time etc. Now that we have the Business and Technical Requirements signed by the client and we all understand one another we can move into specific details. These may include specifications for design as well begin to spec out some ideas, development approaches that may have evolved, enterprise ideation, legal, analytics approach, and a branding approach/possibly an integrated ad campaign. Kickoff meeting with the final assigned team internally and then present back the consensus to the client and sign off to move forward.
Design Phase ( Information, Interaction, Visual Design) ( Project Requirements guide the conceptual and technical development)
Now that we are off to a good start and are beginning as a team to really understand the clients goals and objectives, we can move to the "Information'. What is a good way to organize the information? Is there an existing site? Does it need to just go away or can it be salvaged? Analyze existing site structure if applicable. Begin from scratch if the site is yet to exist. Begin to define the user profiles and then move into "Interaction". We begin by asking "How will the user (s) interact with the site? (User Experience, UX) We begin to define from the user profile the user interaction paths throughout the site and then quickly into site architecture options i.e. Information Architecture (IA). This phase begins to the define the architecture of the information and how the user will experience this information according to the choices they make. We now... very gently present these IA ideas to the client and get sign off.
Visual Design
How will the site look? Creative begins to define the visual designs based on the architecture documentation and the UX as we have previously defined and gained "CLIENT SIGN OFF"... Danger areas here include, not gaining full client understanding but a sign off. Be absolutely certain your client understands where the site headed. I've worked with some clients who are very visual, they smile and sign off on the architecture but then begin to step backwards as they see it with creative. This can cost time and money. DANGER WILL ROBINSON! There is a trick here I have learned and actually put to the test. One will have to use this rarely and by this point in the project you will know the client well enough to use this, and really you are only offering the client more of what they want. Sometimes if the site is really complicated this should be required, a simple design one layout may be enough with some revisions. The idea is to have three creative designers approach the HP design and one secondary page layout from their personal perspective. You will be so surprised at the differences in the creative approaches! There are a couple of variations to this approach, are you having budgetary probs with the client? Is the client just creatively very picky? This approach can help to solve both of these problems. If the problem is the client is having slim budget, present the three options strategically to focus on the middle option that includes the specifics needed in moderation for the client and then at a budget that the agency can actually make some kind of profit from or create a site that could be award-winning. Secondly if the issues are picky creative responses the three options gives the client more to look at, more options, they are more likely to begin to narrow down to a singular focus and keep the creative process moving with less revisions. Try it... I have actually run test on these theories and they actually work out better for both ends. So we've presented the paper prototypes and we finally have a creative vision with client sign off... YES! There are some meetings and details before this but we are moving along... One thing I would like to certainly mention are "Focus Groups", there will be scenarios that Focus Groups are absolutely needed and must be integrated in so not to surprise the client with a hidden cost.
Implementation Phase ( Build, Test, Maintain) ( The Site is built and modified based on testing and analytical feedback)
It is time to begin to create a working website in the "Build" stage. We move to technical production front end and back-end development. Tie the front end visual interface to the backend, go through internal reviews/revisions and launch an "Alpha" site on a development server ( we will not be getting into servers in this discussion as it can get lengthy). This is where Quality Assurance (QA) technicians come in and "Test" test test! Now we can determine... Where are the problems? We determine through, proofreading the copy top to bottom/every page, testing on various platforms and browsers, complete QA, a client review once stable, gain feedback make revisions and move to "Beta" testing.
Maintain (How Can We make the Site Better?)
We will certainly hear from the users if it was a "re-design" and can incorporate valid revisions from this angle as they will catch the smallest of detail so be sure to provide an area suggesting they provide their feedback. Also, begin to analyze the server logs over the next month or so, look at your analytics applications, Google, Webtrends, Omniture, whatever you have gone with, I suggest have two installed to so you have something to compare to Google is free and has so many other options to integrate you gotta use it as at least one angle (period). You also have the online versions that if you integrate the code can give you data as well: Quantcast.com and Alexa.com, if you are planning on serving Ad Units/Banners this is a must as well as becoming IAB certified. From all this data begin to prioritize the revisions and quantify the rational of the users via the interaction with the site and how you would change the site to get the results you are looking for to gain ROI or funnels to a goal. The process above never ends, it continues and continues, one will always need to maintain and upgrade the site with content and remain fresh.
There are a million details that are between the lines you have just read, but this is a good start and a good "umbrella" process and has worked for me on projects ranging from 30K to over 1 million. Remember process is imperative, it will evolve and need to be tweaked from project to project, but a process like I've described above will keep you on track which equates to agency profitability and more importantly a happy client.
Just my two cents...
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