WordPress Design Process

This following is an overview of our WordPress Web design process.

Initial Consultation:

1. Discuss customers business goals and objectives with the customer.
2. Establish design and marketing budgets.
3. Have the custom send us an outline of the requirements and navigational structure.  If they don’t have one or need help developing one, we will help with this.
4. Once site requirements are submitted and approved, we prepare and submit our proposal to the customer.
5. The customer accepts or rejects the proposal.
6. Review and sign the Service Agreement.

If the proposal is accepted, we email over the service agreement.
The service agreement will need to be signed and emailed or mailed back to us.
We require half of the payment for the design work as Initial payment.  The final payment is due upon completion or on a specified date.  We accept checks or major credit cards (except Discover) as payment.  Payment may be made securely through our online form.

Design Specs (look and feel):

1. We will require your logo in electronic format (no scans).  The preferred format is Photoshop .PSD or high quality .JPG
   We typically base the color scheme of the site on the logo colors.  However, this is subjective and we can base it on complementary colors or colors of your choosing.
2. We ask that you email links to 3 or4 sites that you like and tell us what you do and don’t like about them.  You may like the colors on one, the layout on the other, the ease of navigation of another and so on.  This gives us an idea of the style that you like.  If you have no opinion, we will design the site to trending and industry-leading standards.
3. Once we get a good idea of what you are looking for in terms of design, we start on the actual site design and development.  If you would like a design composition or “comp”, we can provide this but we need to know up front that you would like to have a comp.  The “comp” is a single image, non-working representation of the site.  Note that this must be written into the agreement and will increase the cost of the project significantly.
   Note on comps:   Comps are typically developed for customers that have very specific ideas for the design and layout.
4. At this time, the customer either approves the comp for production or asks for revisions.  If there is no comp, we move forward with the design.
5. We may require you to preview or select theme images from our Stock Photo source.  Once selected, we will purchase, download and use as part of your site theme or slideshow.

WordPress Theme and Setup

We use scalable, responsive WordPress themes.  We will include Woo Commerce Integration (eCommerce Solution) if your site requires it.
We also install plugins that we have found to be reliable and enhance functionality, usability, and security of your website.
One extremely important factor is that we use a backend visual editor that is easy for our customers to use.

Content integration

When the site structure is complete, we will start on the content integration which includes written copy and page-specific images, graphics, documents, etc.
All copy needs to be sent to us in electronic format such a Microsoft Word .DOC format.  Images can be sent in .JPG format.

Web Hosting:

1. We’ll setup your hosting account at this point so your site will have a place to reside.  We’ll also set up all DNS records and pointers.
2. We can register your domain name for you if you haven’t already done this.
3.  The hosting plan will be based on your site requirements.  The business account is the most popular and can be upgraded if necessary.
4. The customer will need to sign up for the hosting account online.
5. Once sign-up is complete, the hosting account will be online within a few hours.
6. We highly recommend that you select the Sucuri security solution as an add-on.

AWS Hosting:

Houston’s Host Utilizes the Amazon Web Services (AWS) datacenter for hosting. AWS delivers mission-critical hosting solutions for enterprise and small business customers.

We offer managed web hosting services.  This means we handle all of the daily and weekly maintenance tasks that WordPress requires. We also setup your email accounts and perform any server-related tasks that you require.

Each account offers everything you need to get started.  We can scale up your hosting account as your business requirements grow.

Easy to Manage – If you do want to login to your hosting account, we offer the Plesk Control panel which is a   powerful management tool.

Testing and Live deployment:

Once your site is complete, we do thorough testing before making your site live.
We make every effort to make sure you have adequate time to review all aspects of your site on our development server first.  After you review and approve the site, we then move it to the live hosting environment.  Once live, we test again to be sure everything is perfect!
At this point, we turn the site over to you.

Marketing:

Once the site is live, we start on our marketing efforts including Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Social media.  These are opt-in plans.  Just ask us for a proposal.