At 5&Vine, our website projects are always rooted in strategy. We start by aligning on what success looks like, and ensure clarity on your value proposition, Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), personas, and competition. Further, we’ll align on overall website direction, SEO, technical requirements, architecture, and outline how we’ll collaborate.
We also begin with a pre-mortem because let’s be honest, shit happens. The pre-mortem is a candid conversation about what could go wrong with this engagement, bringing awareness to any issues you may have experienced in the past, or are concerned about now, so we can discuss and identify what we can do to mitigate these risks.
With roles and responsibilities outlined clearly between both teams, we will start with SEO research to inform the architecture, wireframes, internal linking, and content strategy of the site. When we’ve aligned on the site map wireframes and defined goals for each page, we’ll share clear milestones and check-in dates for your team to understand the review and approval process, along with the plan to launch.
Informed by wireframes, we will begin the design and copywriting process, resulting in a number of creative concepts to choose from alongside your initial copy draft. Once we have approved design direction and copy, we will enter development, source or create images, GIFs, and video content, and rigorously test at every stage of development. Mobile-responsive pages will be optimized through customizations to ensure that the content is perfectly aligned for both mobile and desktop.
Completed pages are then shared for review, feedback and approvals according to the milestone calendar. During these sprints, we will have real-time communication with you via Slack and/or Jira for ease of communication and project management.
As we approach our launch, we move into rigorous testing for bugs, load time, and page speed. With final approval, we’ll migrate from the staging server to live, with additional testing on the live site.
After launch, we offer hosting, monitoring, and maintenance packages. All necessary stakeholders will have access to the backend of the new site, with training on how to navigate and make updates to the site through the integrated CMS. As necessary, we can develop and share copy and visual guidelines to ensure any updates adhere to the brand standards.
A standard website will typically take between 3-4 months. More complex projects, including those requiring advanced customizations, database and ERP integrations, or complex functionality can extend to 5-7 months.