Ritty in the City©
print media, internet development, marketing studio

Web Design & Development:
Design & Development Process

1. Consultation

First we offer a free initial consultation so that we
may gain an understanding of your company and
your internet marketing needs. We can conduct this consultation via email, chat/messenger, telephone,
or in person if you are in the Ft. Lauderdale area.

We will determine the general number of pages and technical utilities you’ll need: a feedback or
information request form, email links, databases or
e-commerce abilities, MLS search capabilities,
custom database applications, etc.

2. Proposal

Then we submit a Web Site Development Proposal which will outline the contents to be developed, the graphic and technical requirements, proposed
timeline, and the cost of producing your Web site.

We also include a relevant portfolio sampling and additional useful information such as explanations
of web site features, search engine information, etc.

3. Project Iniation

Upon your approval of the proposal we require 30% deposit. Along with this invoice, we will send  you a contract. The contract will state the project amount, terms and agreement, and other miscellaneous
items. and a signed contract. Upon receipt of your deposit and signed contract, your web site is put into our project queue.

4. Domain Name Registration & Hosting

If you have chosen a domain to register for your
web site, we will direct you to hosting and locking in your domain name.

5. Planning and Strategy

We start the process by having you fill out our Web
site Planner Kit. This gathers information about
your company, services, audience, purpose, site
goals and more.

We wrote the planner for you, our clients, because successful web sites are built on strategy and
planning, and an effective plan starts with quality information. To get quality information you need to
ask the right questions.

This planner will also give you a full outlook of how
you see your future web site, and allows us to learn your objectives and goals for your project.

6. Research

Before any design work is done, we begin our own process of research. Many design companies will
skip this step, rushing to get the project completed. Although this can still potentially result in an
attractive web site for your company, it will not result
in the most effective web site for your company.

We'll research your company, clients, local and
national competition, target market or industry, probable audience.. We will scour all resources to
learn as much as possible about your market and
goals in order to develop the most appropriate site
for you.

8. Collecting Materials

Now is the time to start collecting materials for your web site. This includes anything that you can
provide us with to help us design your web site;
current and past brochures, logo files, business
cards, photos of your staff or place of business, catalogs, text, etc. If you're selling products, we will need photos and product information.

The more information and materials you provide us with, the quicker your project will be completed and
the better overall results.

You can email, mail, or drop by any content that
you have at any time.

8. Site Architecture and Graphical Layout

We will then sketch an outline detailing the site architecture. This is a description of the navigation
of the site. The primary goal is to let people
browse your web site easily, without confusion. A successfully designed navigation scheme must transparently direct a user toward the site's
intended objective.

Next we develop graphic elements for the site such
as color palettes, fonts, custom graphic images/buttons/headlines, photos and illustrations,
etc. We will determine an appropriate Graphical
User Interface (GUI) utilizing all of these materials according to the nature of your business.

When all of these elements are decided upon, we
will create a preliminary implementation of the site design. Generally the home page and 1-2 other
pages are created at this time. We send proofs of those pages as a .jpg image file "snapshot" of what
the completed site will look like.

9. Review and Finalize Design

You will be asked to critique and discuss the mock
up architecture and layout. We offer our clients unlimited design modifications at this stage at no additional cost. We'll go back and forth with drafts,
fine-tuning the look and feel of the site until a
design is established to be used for your web site.

It is much more efficient to get the design accurate before reproducing it onto numerous pages.

10. Back End / Preparation of Materials

Resizing photos, photo enhancements and optimization, color sampling (for people who
want to match a corporate color to their site
design), preparing e-commerce and similar tasks
are all completed during this phase of the web
design process.

11. Search Engine Optimization

Now? The site's not done! Now is the BEST time to begin thinking about SEO. At Ritty in the City, we
do not complete your web site and then go back
and sprinkle some keywords on top. Skilled web professionals know that to gain competitive search engine placement, Search Engine Optimization
must be on your mind the entire web development process.

It starts with careful naming of files within your web
site. Your page titles (aboutus.html), image names (steve.jpg), alt text tags (text that appears on
screen when an image is hovered over with the
mouse) and more are all factored into the code of
your web site, many times with more relevance to search engines and spiders than the text your site visitors read on the page.

It doesn't take much more effort, but you will be surprised by the results. You won't find any
pages titled "recipe026.html" when "fresh-fish-
recipes.html" will bring much more attention from potential customers searching Google for "fresh
fish recipes".

Of course we also make use of meta tags within
every page of your site. This is code within the web page that the search engines see but site visitors
do not. These include keywords, site description
and more ... even a note to the Search Engine
Spiders asking them to index your site and come
back often!

12. Content

We will next proceed to "put it all together".
Combining the graphic elements we've created
and collected with text and data your site will
feature, we fill the content within the shell that we
have created.

13. Special Functionalities - Scripting and Database Work

If you requested any special scripting (contact
forms, feedback forms, databases, reservation systems, etc.) we will integrate the scripting into
your web site.

14. Testing and Debugging

While your site is being developed, you will be reviewing the web site. Proofreading everything is
in correct order. We will thoroughly review the site ourselves. We will check web site load time,
browser testing, resolution testing and the overall performance of your site.

15. Site Publishing - "Going Live!"

When everything looks great, you'll sign off on the project and pay any balance on the account, and
we'll transfer the site to your www server location
and your site is published for the world to see!

Copyrights covering all content and web site
graphics created by Ritty in the City will be
transferred to you at this time as well.

You can now start advertising your site, telling
friends and business acquaintances, and
publishing printed materials with your web site
address on them.

16. Search Engine Submission and Ongoing Needs

We will submit your web site to dozens of search engines and we will resubmit the site every 45
days for a full year after we have completed
building your site.

We can also help you with regular site
maintenance, either on an as-needed hourly or regularly schedule recurring basis. Or, we can set
you up to make minor text modifications yourself.
Let us know what you need to move forward with the most useful web site you could have!

17. Estimated Standard Timeline:

After receiving your contract and deposit (Step 3)
you will typically see your site architecture and mock
up of the page layouts (Step 8) within 2 weeks.

From there, we fine tune (Step 9), with each round
of revision drafts taking 7-10 working days. We are generally pretty on-target with the first draft, and
then it is in your hands. The more revision requests, the longer this stage can take.

Preparing the files, dropping in the content and
going live (Steps 10-14) generally takes 7-10 days. Count on slightly longer with dynamic flash
functional web sites and e-commerce stores, and
even longer for custom database applications.