Typical Website Stages

Website or intranet content development typically includes most or all of the stages below. For your site, I’ll make a specific proposal, depending on your goals and existing content.

1. Content strategy

We meet to outline your unique strengths, your business goals, who will use your website and what they need, your competition, and other key factors in your business or organization. Afterward, I write a strategy summary that you can also use to plan and develop other business projects.

2. Other capabilities

I can work with your in-house team — or, as a principal in the consulting group MSB Associates , I can bring in a team to supply other capabilities you need: secure and scalable development, user experience, design, social media.

3. Information architecture: site structure and navigation

I develop an outline for your site showing a hierarchy of pages and a label for each page. An important part of this process is choosing keywords that speak the language of your customers or employees and other users.

4. Information design: wireframes

I make schematic diagrams, called wireframes, of your homepage and other pages. The wireframes assign space to content according to the priorities defined in the strategy.

5. Content and copywriting, plus content coaching and guides

I write copy for your site and/or provide simple guidelines and templates you can use in writing your own site copy. I leave your team with editing and writing guides that will help you maintain the site over time.

Throughout every project, industry-standard practices for development of content that is usable and optimized for search and Web 2.0 ensure that your site performs the way you want it to.