1 Strategic Goals 

When it comes to client information, you should know that we are relentless hunter-gatherers. It gets downright primordial, it may even hurt a bit, but oh, the benefits that lay in store for you when it comes to our finished work.

That said, we have what we call a “discovery,” a process in which your brain is wracked, picked and all but wrenched from your skull in order to extract the information that will be required to ensure we fully understand your strategic goals. This means understanding your company, your brand’s positioning, your audience, competitors, and having an understanding of your industry itself and your place in it.

Then, and only then, will we be able to determine your immediate and long-range goals and expectations for your website. We’ll also discuss your content strategy, schedule, and budget during this first stage.

Once all this hunting and gathering is done, and once your brain has been returned to your skull, we alight to the cave and prepare a creative brief, which we present to you to ensure we’ve identified your needs and goals as you see them.

2 Information Architecture 

After a successful Step 1, the remaining steps are very much in the “Relax, leave it to us” vein, but nevertheless, we certainly don’t mind sketching them out for you.

This “Information Architecture” phase involves the creation of a global navigation structure that includes intuitive, consistent and logical sections and labels based around content that is: a) Appropriate, b) Accurate, and c) Accessible. And given our propensity for long-term relationships (see “No one-site-stands”) we always develop your Global Navigation Structure to be both scalable and flexible for future expansion of your website. Very important!

Another critical tool in the arsenal is the website wireframe – a basic visual representation of your site's proposed structure. The Wireframe maps out the major elements of the website layout and how they relate to each other. This is the foundation of your website's look and feel and helps guide the visual design, while being structured around the all-important content.

During Step 2 we also address issues such as “site stickiness” (the things that make a visitor stay on your website longer, and keep returning) and the creation of strategic links.

3Production 

This step is all about design and technical development, where creativity is woven together with technology. Yeah, you might call this “the fun stuff,” but it’s still very hard work, and an extremely important element of your site. For it’s here in Step 3 that Thrillworks will develop your website’s “look”—the layout, images, fonts and colours that will help meet your creative and strategic goals. Of course, we ensure the look of your site meets your corporate guidelines and also complements your off-line branding. This is all done with fully standards-compliant code that makes your website accessible to both users and search engines.

It is also during the Production stage that we develop the interactive features and implement back-end technologies—things like web applications, forms, transactions, search tools, dynamic content, games, and even simple buttons. We also secure applicable pages and forms, and ensure everything is functioning correctly in all browsers (responding as quickly as possible). That includes optimizing all images and animations so that load times are not unlike greased lightening. (Yes, that means fast, super fast.)

When we've done our jobs right—and we always do—these creative and technical efforts are transparent to the user and manifest as a perfect and enjoyable web experience.

4 Testing and Quality Assurance 

Step 4 ensures that your new site is flawless prior to launch. Our team will test your site in a Development Environment to ensure proper functionality, and do all we can to put it through its paces. Though all in good fun, things can get downright nasty as we scruitize each other's work and try to break the site by trying things that no sane user would ever come up with. This includes proofreading your content with the extra-keen eyes of a hawk. When the dust settles, your website is a finely polished treasure to behold.

Not to leave you out of the fun and excitement, we then commence User Acceptance Testing. UAT is your chance to test and review the website, and to ultimately sign off that you're 100% satisfied.

Now, we’re just about done. Having used the most current technologies, coupled with our profound and enthusiastic understanding of the Web, we’ll have developed a website for you that is not just cutting edge, but also scalable and backwards compatible to accommodate the largest audience. That means we'll ensure a good experience for those web users that just don't like change and cling to older browsers.

5 LAUNCH! 

Yes, let’s do launch. A most exciting time! And it doesn’t stop there...

While other, less nurturing agencies view ‘launch’ as the end of the road, at Thrillworks it marks another important stage in the emerging relationship. We liken it to producing a newborn baby: after all, it’s important to make sure the child grows up strong and healthy!

Post-launch, Thrillworks will help you to determine the success of your website. We'll use various web analytics tools that will measure each visitor's journey through your website. Using the resulting site metrics—and then by comparing these against industry standards—you’ll gain a better understanding of your visitors and their patterns (in a real business context) and know how to improve your future online and marketing efforts. We'll also monitor your website's uptime and be in the position to jump on any problems before you even know there's an issue.

And finally, we’ll develop a process for updating your website as well as continue providing you with suggestions and updates on future trends and technologies. Throw in some optional training and support, and… that’s it! A beautiful experience concludes and a wonderful relationship blossoms! At Thrillworks, the honeymoon is truly never over. Right, what are you waiting for? Contact Thrillworks today.