Methodology

Discover

• Meet with client management and project leadership to develop a detailed understanding of what the site must do to further the organization’s mission.
• Unearth ideas for how to organize and design the content to better serve the audience(s)
• One of the most collaborative phases of the project
• Includes:
  • Analyzing current usage reports and user feedback
  • Interviewing functional and department heads
  • Running additional diagnostic reports on your site and its rankings in Search Engines, etc.

Define

• Create storyboards and/or a specification that defines the information architecture of the site, as well how the interactive flows will be integrated.
• Deliver the site definition to you for review and comment, and refine it as needed.
• The final site definition document serves as the blueprint for the remainder of our work.

Design

• Begin with a creative meeting in which the project team and IMA share and discuss their respective design ideas for the site.
  • You prepare by selecting sites whose designs you appreciate.
  • We also choose sites that you might want to consider emulating.
• We develop three design comps of the home page.
• We refine the one you like best until you are pleased with the design.
• We carry the design into the landing pages, the lower-level information screens, search results screen, etc.

 Develop

• We create the static and dynamic portions of the site. This includes
  • All graphical elements (buttons, labels, etc.)
  • Programming
  • Content population work.
• A large part of this phase focuses on the customization and programming of the tools adopted as part of the solution
• Throughout the development process, we optimize the site for natural Search Engine finds through robots and spiders.

 Deploy

• We place the site on our servers under a test URL and conduct quality assurance, with several different Web browsers and at different access speeds.
• We train of Web site managers and contributors to use the administrative and content management tools we place at your disposal.
• When the site checks out completely, we move the site from its test location to the hosting environment of your choice.

 Debrief

• After the site is launched, IMA handles periodic support and maintenance tasks.
• We conduct quarterly sessions to provide you with IMA’s marketing and consulting expertise on a regular basis to recommend site enhancements and mid-course adjustments based on real performance and experience in the market.
• We can measure the initial SEO effectiveness and help you formulate a long term SEO / marketing strategy if needed.