First, we examine your brand, starting with your logo and collateral materials. If you don’t have a logo, don’t worry—we can help you with that too. We look at what your competitors are doing and what keywords bring the most traffic for your industry.

We then talk about the concrete results you are looking to achieve, whether it’s increased foot traffic to your restaurant, increased web-based sales, or more sales leads.

We use a process called “sorting” to determine what content should go on your website, and how it should be organized. If you need help developing content for your website, we can help with that too.

We then create a mockup of a page or a few pages of your site and present it. Depending on the project, we may start building the site at this point, or we may present a flat mockup. We talk about how each element shown will function and work with you for revisions. It’s important to make design- or functionality-related revisions at this stage, as it’s not cost-effective to make these types of big changes once coding begins.

Then the coding begins. At this point, we begin building the site, and we show you beta (test) versions of the site using a non-public website. Now is the time to make content changes before we go live.

Now, testing: we test the site using the most popular browsers and operating systems to make sure it is as compatible as possible.

Finally, the launch. You may want to alert your customers that you’ve launched a new website, either with a mailing or with an email blast. I.T. Roadmap can help you with email blasts, using opt-in email marketing products such as Constant Contact or Mailchimp. Third-party products like this are the best way to ensure you stay within FCC regulations.