Development

Building your new website

If content and design are the blueprints of your house, development is when we build the walls, floors, and frames. All the designs and requirements we have worked through together are about to come to life!

A mobile phone with arrows pointing to a computer screen.

What is the development phase?

This phase is where we take all that we have learned, documented, and designed in the project and begin to build the framework and architecture of your site — the HTML, the CSS, and the other fun programming terms we love to geek out about. 🙂

When this phase is done, it will align with your previously approved deliverables and be complete with intended functionality, an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS), and subtle animations or movement.

We use an agile sprint development process

Instead of waiting for the designer to complete every page design, and only then getting started on development, we’ve adopted an agile sprint process.

Your timely approvals of the designs ensures our designer can hand off key portions of the design for the developer to build. Then, they work in parallel to get your website ready for the content entry process sooner.

Typical sprint 1

Est. duration: 2-3 wks

  • Header
  • Footer
  • Page block library system
  • Style guide

Initial testing and content entry begin!

Typical sprint 2

Est. duration: 2-4 wks

  • Modifications to sprint 1
  • Menus
  • Key post-types
  • Webforms

CMS training is scheduled!

Typical sprint 3

Est. duration: 2-3 wks

  • Modifications to sprint 2
  • Remaining post-types
  • Site search
  • Web forms

Browser testing begins!

Typical sprint 4

Est. duration: 1-2 wks

  • Testing fixes
  • Accessibility fixes
  • Schema implementation
  • Remaining modifications and clean up

Your content entry should be wrapped up soon!

What do you need to plan for during development?

Your project manager will help you make sure every box is checked, but feel free to bring these items up in your next meeting.

Deliver your content and digital assets

We will begin content entry about 2-3 weeks into the development phase.

Content is the #1 delay for website projects, so don’t let this happen to you.

We’ll need your finalized content documents, images, videos, testimonials, stats, and any other assets that will make content entry effective and complete by this point in our project. Delays to receipt of these items could impact your project.

Confirm webform tools and settings

Are we building forms on the website? — We’ll need form email addresses from you.

Or, are you providing form embed code for your CRM? — We’ll need your embed codes.

Can the forms have thank you pages so we can set up conversion goals in Google Analytics? This is ideal.

Decide on hosting and managed services

Do you want to host the site on your own servers?

Or, would you like Orbit to host the website?

We’ll have a discussion with our Development Team Director to discuss the best options for your organization.

Confirm the data privacy compliance plan

Remember our information about data privacy at the beginning of the project? You’ll need to make a decision about the plan for data privacy compliance before we launch.
If you haven’t done so yet, please engage your attorneys to confirm your compliance needs and let your PM know your requirements.

Assemble your content management team

If you’re managing a large website, you’ll need help getting the website ready for launch.

Gather the team who will assist you with reviewing the content entered, add the remaining content you’re responsible for entering based on the content plan in the Content Workbook, make changes, etc. Create a plan and timeline internally with your team that aligns with your launch and get them onboarded and ready for the CMS training.

Microanimation Animation

Animations and movement

This is the step when you’ll see intentional movement such as hover interactions, scrolling animations, and lazy loading (which specifically helps improve page speed).

We always strive to use subtle animation styles that are accessible and add to the web experience without distracting your users.

If you have specific requests, check in with your project manager and designer during your weekly meeting.

In case you missed it….

After development comes content entry.

Once enough of your new website is built, our content entry team will get to work filling it in with your provided copy, content, and digital assets. Your project plan will include the details of what pages we plan to enter.

So, it’s time to get that content organized and ready!

A couple of quick notes…

  • Your PM will wait for the right time to give you access to your website. Usually, access is given at the first CMS training.
  • We sprint on development until a couple of weeks before launch, this means we will train you on the CMS, and you will work in the CMS before we even finish development.