Our Process
Throughout all of our projects, we strategically plan every step before it is taken. Tried and true, we’ve built our meticulous web design process on one rule: no shortcuts. Think of it like Kevlar – strong enough to get the job done, yet flexible enough to fit around anything. Ultimately, we have designed this process to protect what goes inside of it.
Of course, that’s not to say that we take ourselves too seriously. Working together also involves getting to know each other, enjoying conversation, and having plenty of laughs along the way!
Discovery
We want to get to know your brand! Our first step is to discover who you are, familiarize ourselves with your industry, and become experts in your brand. We do this through interviews, market research, and competitor analysis. Already have a company story and a compelling visual identity? Then we’ll take you through our Brand Discovery process. Here we identify your foundation, differentiators, competitors, and admirables.
If you want to take it one step further and find a way to tell your unique story, we’ll take you through our Brand Story process. Through interactive workshops, research, and interviews, we’ll get to know your team, history, and culture. The goal here is to shape a cohesive story that everyone in your company can tell. Your brand will become clearly defined and your message consistent. Curious what a brand story looks like? Check out part of our history here: HMG Creative Unwrapped
On the visual side, Brand Identity allows us to outfit a new or refined look for your brand. Our designers will craft a stunning visual design that retains your brand equity while resonating more effectively with your audience.
Who does all this, you ask? Our Senior Brand and Marketing Strategist, John Paulsen. John has 25 years of entrepreneurial experience and a glorious beard to boot!
While this is all going on, our other team members are performing a technical SEO audit of your current website to assist us in determining how to make your new one even more successful.
Strategy
Let’s plan the next move and make your website effective. After Discovery, we take the insights we’ve gained and draw up a blueprint for your project. We map out a plan based not only on our research but also on your company goals. This step also includes a kickoff meeting with our web team where you’ll meet our Creative Director Johnny Jeffers, Creative Services Manager Daniel Price (me!), and the designer/developer assigned to your project. We iron out your project goals, deliverables, timeline, target audiences, content types, technical requirements, and visual aspirations.
From there, we take a couple of weeks to build out your web strategy. This includes client persona creation, user journeys, and a complete restructure of the site architecture and page mapping. The best part? We present this to you in a visual format so that we can continue to make sure our progress is in alignment with your needs.
Design & Development
Your website is the canvas to display your brand’s personality. Applying creative expertise, we develop a sophisticated and modern look and feel for your web presence that effectively engages your target audience. Your web design is driven by your goals, and informed by our research. Influenced by your taste, and awakened by our creativity. Ultimately, we shape your site around your brand.
When it comes time to present your site’s design, we do things differently here at HMG, and it’s worked for us for over a decade. Instead of showing you a flat, static image of what your site will eventually look like, we provide you with a dynamic, interactive mockup. We’ll take a few core pages of content that you have supplied, visually design and develop them, and present them to you in a fully functional and active website environment. This gives you the opportunity to see how your website will truly look, and even more importantly, how it will feel for a user. We take all the guesswork out of the equation, so come launch day, there are no surprises.
Once your team is satisfied with the direction of the interactive mockup, we gather the rest of your content to design and develop your new website in its entirety. The development of your website includes platform selection, theme customization, specialized functionality, and user-friendly administration.
QA & Launch
Let’s see what the website looks like in action. Now that the full site has been developed, we take time to ensure quality performance and ask questions about the results. Is the website fully mobile-friendly? Does all of the content appear as it should? Is everything categorized correctly? Are all APIs and plugins functioning properly? Are all other integrations seamless throughout the site? These are just a few examples. We also take the time to train you and your entire team on how to manage your website moving forward.
Once QA has been completed and your team is trained, we iron out all of the gritty details of your website launch: hosting, 301 redirects, website security and compliance, setting up Google Analytics, server migration, SEO site mapping, etc. From there, we choose the launch day and time!
Post-Launch Optimization
This is just the beginning. Once launched, the website will go through a 24-hour post-launch QA to ensure all content, plugins, and features are functioning as intended. For 90 days after launch, if any problem related to the original scope of work occurs, we’ll fix it.
At HMG, we truly believe in partnership, so we want to keep the relationship going. After your project launches, there are so many opportunities to continue to work together to increase engagement on your site and grow your brand. Ongoing SEO Strategy, Marketing Strategy, and Social Media Strategy are just a few of our offerings that can take your website from a launch into a fully developed plan to reach your target audiences.
Successful businesses not only have the best products and services – they have the best stories. Let’s tell yours.