Listen.

The most important step it to first listen to your needs.  Because an e-commerce site with 1000's of products is very different than a more informational site for your business.  The helps us to get a clear idea of your needs, and allows us to more accurately create a solution.  It also helps us minimize cost for you.  There are many things for you to consider, but here are just a few items to get the ball rolling:

• Do your best to define what it is you need the application to do.  This could be as simple as provide a way for people to learn about my business, but it could also be more complicated than that.  For example, if you have an existing business that you think could be made more efficient, do your best to layout 'how' your business works step by step so that we can listen and learn and get you some feedback and possible ideas as to what we can do for you.

• If you plan to sell products online:

  • Consider how many products.  Also consider what type of items you want to sell.  Are they simple widgets?  Or are they more complex and configurable?

  • Think about how you want to handle the shipping process, such as cost and vendor.

  • Look and feel of the application may or may not be important to you, but it still needs to be thought about.  Do you have a particular design in mind?  Or do you just want to use an off-the-shelf template?

• A very important aspect to consider is audience.  Who do you plan to offer this to?  As many people as possible?  A select few employees?  Or a particular market?  This contributes to all of the above, because depending on who is using it, the approach can be very different.

Discuss.

Once we've got all your basic needs laid out and we've had some time to consider it, we'll want to discuss our thoughts with you. This could be over multiple discussions as we wrap our head around your needs.  We want you to feel open about talking with us, so never avoid making that phone call if you think you have more to say.

If you have complex needs, we many need to get into the weeds a little and talk about possible ways to go, but if that isn't your cup of tea we can layout an approach for you.

When and if we decide on a plan that you feel comfortable with, we'll convert the plan into action and layout a timeline that works for both of us.

Run With It.

Now that we both understand everything and have agreed to it's design and cost, it's time for us to get to work.  This usually means we run off to our computers and start creating.

To help with that feeling that nothing is happening, we always try to put together what we call a Development (Dev) Site.  All this is is a website where you can see iterative updates and progress over time.  The initial Dev site can take time to put together depending on the application needs, but once it's up we periodically update it so that we can share and further discuss the current state of things.

We do like to mention that this phase of solution creation is not an overnight experience.  Sometimes it can take days or weeks for us to accomplish any particular goal, but rest assured we are working on it.  Again, we always welcome a phone call or email to see how things are going.

Once the initial development is completed and you approve of it we start to plan out the next step, which is Go Live.  All this means is we will need to pick the final host for the solution and start its setup.  Then we just pick a time to go live with it.  In almost all cases we like to maintain the Dev site for future updates, so that testing can proceed there rather than on the production (public) site.  Giving you more comfort knowing a simple update doesn't take your application down.