With extensive background and familiarity with the Business Edge product coupled with a reputation for developing robust e-solutions, NetSignature provides businesses the tools they need to establish an effective online presence.

Our full process is described below:

Phase I: Discovery

This phase helps us understand the scope and plan for project deliverables.  A thorough discovery process helps us understand your online goals, target audience, industry and competition.  This is the most crucial phase of the project, which will serve as a reference for every step that follows. This phase consists of the following steps:

• Project Questionnaire – a thorough document which defines the goals and objectives of the project, target audience, overall marketing messages, customer perception and competitive landscape.
• Audience Survey – Friendly customers are interviewed to capture relevant feedback and identify any gaps that may be missing in our strategy. Any information collected will be aggregated and reviewed with you, and then fed back into the project. This is a crucial step in ensuring the new site will be a success with it’s target audience.
• Persona Development -  Know your users!  Information collected from interviews with you and/or the audience surveys is transformed into a Persona, a fictitious description of a typical user of your website, defining demographic and psychographic information.  This serves as an amazing tool in helping designers and developers understand your users behavior in much greater detail.   The more we know about your users, the better solution can be built.
• Competitive Analysis - Understanding your competition is a key piece in correctly positioning yourself online. 
• High Level Requirements - Basic identification of client requirements.  A more thorough Project Requirements Definition (PRD) process which documents specific functional requirements (data elements, logic, presentation, administration and reporting) is available separately.

Phase II: Develop Site Structure

The goal of this phase is to connect your visitors with relevant content.  Information has to be structured in a manner that is straightforward and easy to navigate.  Using Industry standard deliverables such as Sitemaps and Wireframes, we’ll take the information learned from the project definition and discovery phase and create a site structure that reflects the project goals and is appealing to your target audience.  This phase is a very interactive process in which your participation is crucial.  

This phase consists of the following steps:

• Sitemapping – Site-mapping consists of reviewing your existing site, conducting a competitive analysis, and referencing project goals and objectives to come up with a new, revamped sitemap, which is easy to navigate.
• Project Requirements Definition (PRD) – Any functionality scoped in the previous phase will be detailed here, including database models and process flows, when and if needed.
• Wireframing – In preparation for the actual website design, a series of mockups (or page templates) will be created using an industry standard process called Wire-framing.  This exercise will help us define the structure of each section/page and the various text or graphical elements that go on each page
• Usability Analysis – A thorough usability analysis will be done on the completed wireframes to ensure the site will be easy to navigate and flow smoothly and efficiently, connecting visitors with relevant content.  Usability issues identified in this step will be adjusted back into the wireframes.
  

Phase III Design Visual Interface

Phase III is the creative phase of the project, and is often the most fun. Our designers will take all of the information documented in the earlier two phases and work their magic to produce a design for your website. 

• Initial Concept – The design team will produce 2-3 initial design concepts for you to review.  These will be an image based mockup of the home page of your new site only.  Based on your approval, one of these concepts will be selected to move forward with.  We typically allocate sufficient time in the schedule for 2-3 iterations of the initial concept to allow you to tweak or customize the look and feel as needed.  The completed initial concept will require your sign-off.
• Subpage Concepts – Once the overall look and feel is established, the design team will then proceed with creating the subpage templates, using the wireframes for direction and guidelines.  We typically allocate sufficient time in the schedule for 2-3 iterations of the subpage concepts to allow you to tweak or customize the look and feel as needed.  The completed subpage concepts will require your sign-off.
  

Phase IV:  Build and Integrate

Now that legwork and planning of the site is essentially completed, it’s time to build the site.  In this phase we take the design and documentation assembled thus far, and put the two together to produce a fully functional and interactive site.

• Development – The development phase is where the visual design will be converted into online code, and any supporting products installed, and/or any functionality developed.
• Testing – Our team will go through and test the site to make sure all flow and functionality works as expected.  A full test cycle will be completed prior to launch to ensure the site is as stable as possible.  
  

Phase V:  Launch and Beyond

With all project tasks completed, it’s time to launch the site.  In this phase, site files are migrated to the live server and put online.  The new site is now live!  

• Beta Launch – In this phase, we will either move the site files ourselves or work with designated I.T. personnel.  Files will be placed in a staging/hidden area for internal/external testing.
• Launch – It’s time to “flip the switch” and launch the new site.
• Ongoing Maintenance – Per the sales contract, if any ongoing maintenance is purchased, we will continue with making requested updates.  Support information to be provided in this phase.
• Marketing – The site overhaul is complete.  Now it’s time to direct qualified traffic to the site.  Purchased online marketing programs will be kicked-off and the site will transition to a post-launch phase.