We Build Great Websites One Deliberate Step at a Time.
And that's how we'll build your great website.
This chart shows the process we generally follow to develop websites that make full use of our technology and implementation services.
Features Selection
This is part of our initial sales process. It involves a Cirrus solution consultant sitting down with you to review your business goals and assess what you hope to accomplish with your website. We’ll make sure you understand which aspects of an online strategy are critical to your success so you can select the combination of Cirrus ABS services that will best help you achieve your business objectives.
Proposal Acceptance
Once you’ve selected the appropriate Cirrus eBusiness Suite features and options for your project, we’ll deliver a contract proposal. This document spells out precisely what you’ll receive from us and delineates our pricing and payment terms. When you’ve agreed to the terms and signed the contract, we’re ready to proceed with your solution.
Pre-Kickoff Preparation
Your Cirrus ABS project manager will call you to schedule an official project kickoff meeting as soon as you’ve signed off on your project and (unless otherwise specified) sent us your initial payment. During the call, you’ll be briefed on what information we’ll need you to give us in the kickoff meeting. Then, prior to the meeting, we’ll send you a preparation sheet (“The Why and How of Your Website Kickoff Meeting”) along with other supporting documentation. We respectfully ask that you spend whatever time necessary to review this material and follow its suggestions. The success of the kickoff meeting—and, ultimately, your website—depends on it.
Kickoff Meeting
We strongly recommend that your key stakeholders—your high-level executives and decision-makers—be present at this meeting. That’s because our NetCentered approach is tied inextricably to your company’s overall business objectives and profitability.
The kickoff meeting is where we firmly establish our partnership with you—a partnership in which we essentially serve as your marketing department or an extension of it. During the meeting, we’ll cover a lot of ground, discussing your company’s market, products, services, people and history, your branding message, your target demographic, how interactive media will work with traditional media to convey your message, the most efficient and effective sales path, a content path leading to effective copy and SEO development, a powerful call to action, and analytics designed to measure your new website’s performance as never before. We’ll also cover the site’s content architecture, its design and branding, and such administrative details as the hosting options necessary to get your site up and running.
Getting through all this typically requires a meeting time of about 3 to 4 hours. We’ve found that anything less doesn’t provide us with the level of input we need to ensure our clients’ success online. Of course, since we’re in partnership with you, we’ll have additional conversations at later dates to make sure everything’s on track. Remember, the goal is your Web success. And this kickoff meeting is absolutely essential to our getting to know you and pointing you in that direction.
NOTE: If you’ve elected to have Cirrus ABS work with you in developing a more comprehensive strategy—following either our NetCentered Marketing Plan Development program or our Website Strategic Action Plan program—additional strategic meetings, research, and developmental processes will apply. All of this will be set in motion prior to the website kickoff meeting described above.
Project Map Creation
After the kickoff meeting, our team will create a project map that outlines the content and functional areas of your website as well as the Cirrus eBusiness Suite tools to be used in each area. This map is a visual aid that helps us make sure all your needs are covered. It also ensures that the functionality and navigation structure of your site support your online business objectives.
Project Map Approval
We review your project map with you, and, if necessary, adjust it until you’re completely happy with it. At that point, you sign off on it, indicating that you and Cirrus ABS are in agreement over the content architecture of your website.
Website Design
With the approval of your project map, we’re ready now to begin designing your eBusiness Suite website. This is where we create the magic. Your project manager will help you choose from our catalog a design template that supports your brand identity and your overall marketing/branding objectives, as defined in the kickoff meeting. You’ll provide us with your logo, color-scheme preferences, and whatever else may be needed to personalize the look of the site.
Custom Design Option: If you like, our award-winning graphic design team can work with you to develop a custom website design unique to your organization.
Website Design Approval
Once we’ve completed your website design, our project manager will share the concepts with you and ask for your approval. We provide two standard rounds of design revisions with our Custom Design Option. Template-based designs are allocated one round of design modifications in the areas of your site that our designers have customized.
Website Build-Out
Here’s where our experienced Web developers take over, actually building your site, page by page, and putting the full capabilities, the full functionality, of our Cirrus eBusiness Suite platform to work for you. The build-out follows carefully the specifications you’ve approved—as set forth in your project map/content architecture and the design template.
Technical SEO Implementation
Your website’s been built. Now our SEO specialists create the page titles and “behind-the-scenes” descriptors called META tags. These are elements that further define who you are and what you do in a way that helps search engines find your site, index it, and rank it. Remember, our SEO specialists are also instrumental in helping you determine the key words and phrases our writer will use (if you’ve elected to have us write your copy) to boost search-engine visibility throughout your site.
Deployment to Staging Environment
Our Web developers work with your chosen hosting provider to set up a staging area. This is the means by which we place your content onsite, do all the functionality testing we need to do, and let you view everything before your site goes live. While accessible to the public (but only if the public happens to know the URL), this staging area is not the final live environment. That will be set up only after you’ve been trained and given us your approval of the site.
Content Development
With your approval of the project map, we recommend you start creating content for each area of your site. This may involve populating the site with copy you’ve previously written or, more often than not, writing new copy specifically for this project. To assist you, Cirrus ABS provides a “best practice” guide for writing effective Web copy.
Optional Writing Services: If you’ve selected our writing services as part of your project, we begin gathering the necessary background information from a variety of media sources—either provided by you or procured by us. We also conduct information interviews with your people and anyone else relevant. The Cirrus ABS writer assigned to your project then uses this material to craft text that effectively communicates your message. Among other things, this means using key words and keyword phrases to help boost your search engine visibility. The goal is to get you a high search engine results page (SERP) ranking that helps your target demographic find you online.
Content Finalization/Approval
The typical procedure is to have you review the content of your new website online - at the staging address. To ensure that the content is “on message,” we offer you an unlimited number of copy revisions within the scope of hours you’ve selected.
Content Implementation
Sometime prior to your site going live, either you or we place the content online, in the staging environment. This content includes all visible page text, page titles, META descriptions, and key search terms.
If we write content for you, we’ll place it in the staging environment. We’ll also place any copy you write, provided you’ve contracted with us to do so. Otherwise, you will place your own copy, and you can place it at your leisure.
Website Walkthrough & Training
When all the site designing, building, and testing is done, we provide you with a Custom Training Session. This is two hours of personalized training for any of your people you appoint as site administrators. We cordially invite you and your staff to our facility for this, since we have all the necessary technology and presentation tools here. We are, however, fully equipped with the necessary screen-sharing software to conduct long-distance training online. And, if you like, we can meet with you in person at your facility or any other location, in which case some travel costs may apply.
At this session, your Cirrus ABS project manager will “walk” you through your site. He or she also will reiterate the best practices we’ve discussed with you all along to help you get the most out of your new Web capabilities.
Next, our training team will show you - in detail - how to use all the backend administrative tools that allow you to keep your site updated and constantly search engine visible. We’ve designed these tools for easy, intuitive use, so anyone can master them, even someone with only basic computer skills and no knowledge of HTML. Our trainers simply make sure you’re comfortable enough with these tools to use them effectively and without trouble. We do, of course, offer ongoing support anytime after your site is up and running.
The last item on this session’s agenda, once your training concludes, is a discussion about how your site will be taken live. We’ll brief you on the technical aspects of the launch (including
hosting) … set timelines, responsibilities, and due dates … and determine how best to market your new site (via email blasts, blogs, promos, and other initiatives).
Launch-Plan Creation
Based on the discussion your project manager had with you during your initial site walkthrough and training, he or she prepares a launch-plan document that presents:
- all the relevant technical details of your site launch
- the responsibilities of all parties involved in the launch: us, you, your hosting provider
- a timeline showing when each responsibility must be carried out in order to meet your “live” date
- what marketing venues will be used to promote your new site as well as how and by whom they’ll be executed (Please note that Cirrus ABS offers considerable marketing expertise and award-winning creative capabilities. We can help you with whatever promotional approaches you wish to use: email campaigns, Internet blogs, social marketing, traditional media materials - you name it.)
Launch-Plan Review & Approval
Your Cirrus ABS project manager delivers the launch-plan document for your review and approval. If necessary, we’ll make adjustments to the plan until you’re completely satisfied with it. At that point, you sign off on it, and each party described in the plan executes its designated responsibilities.
Launch Plan Execution
We work with your hosting provider to finalize the details of your Web presence. Most of these details, though, will have been determined and tested already, in the development phase. The only thing left to do now is present your website live to the world - and for us to follow through on whatever promotional campaigns you’ve enlisted us to deliver. We make sure every element of your site launch runs smoothly, according to plan. We also transition you at this stage into an ongoing relationship with our Strategic Support Department. It’s through this relationship, after all, that you stand the best chance of keeping your site relevant and on track toward the achievement of your goals.
Ongoing Support
Our Strategic Support staff exists for one reason: to help you keep your site successful. They’re just a phone call away, too. And they’re fully prepared to address whatever questions or concerns you throw at them. Of course, if it turns out an answer isn’t readily available, they’ll find it ASAP. From their perspective, it’s all about building a relationship with you - about doing what’s necessary to earn and maintain your trust. Keep in mind, the end of your website’s development phase is just the beginning of your NetCentered Marketing. Strategic Support can help you determine how to keep your marketing efforts strong, focused, and effective. That may mean developing additional content, bolstering search engine optimization (SEO), providing technical upgrades, creating various NetCentered media campaigns - including email programs and social marketing - or effecting some combination of all this. Strategic Support can get the ball rolling, putting Cirrus ABS’s extensive marketing and creative capabilities to further work for you. Again: The goal is your continued Web success. And we want to help you achieve it.
For more information, please contact us at Cirrus ABS.