Website Project Phases & Timelines
Wondering what to expect when we handle your website project? Learn the purpose and timeline behind each phase, decision, and deliverable.
Below is our full process for developing WordPress and enterprise sites.
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What to Expect
Most website projects include two phases.
Phase 1: The Blueprint
Included Stages:
Some may be faster, longer, or omitted depending on your project’s timeline and scope.
- an emailed Phase I invoice (electronic payment preferred),
- a Service Agreement Summary, for your quick core understanding and sharing; and
- a link to the full Agreement, (with any core customizations listed in the invoice notes).
This initial invoice will outline the full project amount. You’ll pay a percentage of it as the initial investment through our secure online portal, as credit, debit, ACH, or even PayPal, if you prefer.
You’ll receive an online survey to share deeper insights into your organization, audience, mission, services, and more, in an easy, step-by-step format.
It’s critical that you put as much time and thought into your survey as possible, as it shapes the strategic plan for your project and guides our next call.
Immediately after submitting, you’ll book your Strategy Interview online.
In this live video or phone call, we’ll discuss the more intimate details about your organization and goals, your brand style, and your desired image.
It’s vital to have a quiet, stress-free environment that allows for the time and focus needed to fill in important blanks.
This crucial meeting ensures we have the insights we’ll need to make strategic decisions for you throughout the project without endless questions.
After combining the intel you sent us with the notes from our collaborative Strategy Session, we continue the research phase.
This is one of the most important stages of your website project. It offers crucial data on industry best practices and what users in your industry really want (vs. what your competitor’s websites happen to provide).
This stage may also include your top keywords, competitors, and trends, and reviewing the analytics of your existing website.
We use all this data to inform your Brand Foundations and Website Layout Strategy (WLS).
In this stage, we create your color strategy (informed by color psychology), brand voice, and readability samples. All three are based directly on the Strategic Discovery, Pre-Strategy Survey, Market Research, and Strategy Interview we completed earlier.
Completing Brand Foundations first helps further clarify how your organization should be represented.
This is usually combined into the following WLS stage.
In this exciting stage, you start to literally see the fruit of our strategic process.
This understanding will guide both your and our decisions for this project, and well into the future.
This stage reveals more tangible evidence of our strategic process. First, we combine our intensive research with data from our strategic collaboration with you. Using that, we outline the precise inclusions for all areas of your website.
This vital strategic outline is called the Website Layout Strategy (WLS).
In fact, the WLS looks a lot like an “outline.” It lists everything that will be included on your website, like:
- the number of pages or sections,
- what should go on each page,
- the order elements should be laid out on the page,
- what forms go where,
- form fields for all forms,
- whether fields are required or optional,
- what will happen once a forms is submitted,
- etc.
Pro Tip: Now, you likely see how all the behind-the-scenes research and decisions impact the results an organization may (or may not) get from its website!
You may also see why this stage usually spans 2 to 4 weeks. 😊
We send the WLS for your approval at this crucial stage, as this is the exact outline we’ll draw from to develop your website. (For more complex builds, or time sensitive projects, we may deliver a draft WLS at the end of this Phase.)
Phase 2: The Build-Out
Included Stages:
When possible, we work on more than one Phase 2 stage at a time.
That’s how we can deliver deeply strategic websites quickly
(i.e., in just 5 to 7 weeks for standard WordPress.)
Some may be faster, longer, or omitted depending on your project’s timeline & scope.
You’ll settle a second portion of your total project investment to allow our continued work. We accept payment through our secure online portal as credit, debit, ACH, or even PayPal, if you prefer.
A brief Working Session may also be needed or desired here, to help us guide you toward the best options to finalize your Strategy.
Your WLS will be marked with areas you’ll need to provide. Once you approve the Layout Strategy, in this phase, you’ll provide your website content (wording) and any images you’d like us to use. (If you added Content Writing, we’ll handle this step.)
Note: Website content must be provided before the design.
But why?
This step can perplex clients who’ve never worked with a web strategy company. Typical “web design companies” design the pages first, then write messaging that doesn’t break the design.
But this means they’re prioritizing how your messaging looks, NOT how it serves the user.
But Excellent Presence is a web strategy company.
And we know web design isn’t decoration.
So we prioritize your messaging, since that’s what gets users to take action. Later, we’ll create the imagery that further urges users toward taking that action.
Content writing and polishing is a highly specialized, creative, and technical process.
It requires us to deeply understand your company and your offerings, and to write using your unique voice (established in the Brand Foundations phase).
If included, this stage may also include a boilerplate Privacy Policy and Website Terms & Conditions for review by your legal professional.
Once we finish polishing your content, we send you a link to a private Google Doc. There, you’ll make any comments and answer any questions we had, right there in that document.
We apply your edits, finalize the content, and plan to design your site to highlight your most important messaging.
If you’ve added a custom logo with imagery, we complete it here.
Your logo is a bite-sized representation of your brand style. Choosing your desired version first helps us further confirm that we’re on same visual page before designing your website.
Once you choose your approved logo design, we finalize it and email your web-ready versions (.jpg on white background, and .png with transparent background) within about a week. (Additional formats available.)
Either you or we create us a domain email address (us@yourdomain.org), and sign up with the services you approved in the WLS.
Those initial account emails come right to us, so we can start immediately setting up your technical back-end that supports your website.
We set up the “behind the scenes” functionality that will power your website and automations (forms, CRM, membership software, payment systems — basically everything technical). If any custom development is needed, we also do it during this stage.
We also design your website’s basic look and feel (applying color scheme, menus, choosing fonts, home page header/hero, and footer). This one-screen design will serve as the base “template” for your page designs.
We send that one-screen template for your feedback and approval. After up to 1 to 2 major design adjustments, we continue building your website, and refining your design.
Once you’ve approved your design template in the previous phase, we add your pre-approved website content, plus professional, realistic photos and imagery, as we design your website pages.
Tip: Remember, you’ve already approved your content. While minor refinements may be possible, we’re applying your pre-approved content verbatim here.
This stage may include additional tweaks as we complete several rounds of testing.
This is your chance to make sure everything works exactly as you want and expect (form submissions, payment, page redirection, emails, info display, membership access, etc.).
It’s important that you test everything thoroughly here, because changes requested after website delivery may incur additional charges.
We’ll correct any and every issue you may find, so long as you report it by the deadline we provide.
Then, your site is published live to the Internet. Congratulations!
This is our final step. During this live call, we’ll walk you through transferring ownership of all aspects of your new website from Excellent Presence to your team.
You’ll change over account emails, passwords, and more.
If you’d like us to keep our us@yourdomain.org email address to more effectively help you in the future, we’re happy to! (Recommended if you’ve signed up for a maintenance plan.)
We’ll also answer any last questions you have about what to do going forward.
By the end of this meeting, all access will be securely in your hands. You will leave ready, confident, and in full control.
Once your website is delivered, we’ll answer any questions (or fix any overlooked glitches) on your project during this period.
The length of the support period depends on your website package.
Congrats on your new strategic website!
Did we handle your website redesign? We’ll check back in with you after 30 days to report on any performance insights and improvements you can make, (if you’ve got enough traffic to support the data).
