My approach to creating websites & apps is different

From professional database driven websites to web design training - ask me about my dynamic, human approach to web projects. 14 years experience means that I am one of those rare ecommerce web site designers / developers who really listens and delivers quality database websites for people like you.

It is simply not enough to be a 'web designer' or 'web developer' these days. There are thousands of individuals who profess to be web professionals and will be ready to take on your job for peanuts with no hope of finishing it properly. Sound familiar? If not, you have been fortunate so far or have deep pockets.

I take the process of a web project very seriously; that is, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about things and not every approach works for every client but in order to be able to adapt accordingly, your web person or company needs to have experience, intelligence and communication skills or it all goes very wrong.

"I listen, advise, list, create, present & iterate until we're done"

That quote is the process in a nutshell but to elaborate I'd like to take each bit in turn and explain what it means and why it is important in a web project:

» I LISTEN

No I really listen! This means a lot of things: listening to the 'grand plan' like "I want to be the biggest seller of wooden animals online"; listening to the business case like "we have gone as far as we can with our mail order but with e-commerce and eBay on our side we can improve our turnover by 50% in the first year"; listening to the various departments / staff and their take on things like a marketing head, "we need it to be all singing and dancing with lots of Flash animation..."; and finally listening to my clients' customers, "we just want to be able to navigate to the product we want easily without any trouble, pay securely and get our goods quickly". All this listening can be confusing to the untrained ear because often, no ALWAYS, there are big conflicts of views. It is my job to bring it all together and to bring all the people concerned together so that we have a successful project and product / website at the end.

» I ADVISE

You don't want a 'yes man' who, after listening, just says, "Yep OK, I'll do all that for you...". You need a professional who can take this information and mould it, re-arrange it, represent it in the right way to make as many people happy as possible. My advice comes from my 14 years experience in my industry AND from my direct understanding of your unique situation. I will advise at all stages of the process from talking about the initial grand plan to choosing a payment provider, to managing your domains, to training your staff. Indeed I invite my clients to challenge me, make me work hard!

» I LIST

Well, I list and I report - whatever medium the current situation requires - but what this means is that I record what we all need to know to work in a team together and I encourage my team members to do the same. I use online collaboration tools, email, calendars, whatever makes the most sense for the company, the staff and the project as a whole. Some people love lists of TO-DOs but others prefer email. This does not have to be rocket science and you can definitely over-do the documentation side of things. Rather, I prefer to spend time on the work, not the documents. The biggest advantage of all this though is that you have a source of reference and it can be used to account for decisions i.e. when, by whom and how.

» I CREATE

This is the actual work bit. I follow an Agile approach to design and development in web software which means that I work quite quickly and keep my clients in the loop all the time. We often talk daily about progress. As for my team, if I am working with others on the larger projects, it is a great way to work together and manage people. I find Agile developers much more inclined to work hard as they actually enjoy the approach and find it much more fulfilling to be on an Agile project.

» I PRESENT

No-one likes to be unpleasantly surprised but for it to happen in business, it ends up costing money and time (and sometimes sanity). My Agile process means that all design elements including mock-ups or even buttons AND all my website features e.g. a form for searching through a database of products are presented to my clients at the earliest opportunity throughout the project. Thus, there are no surprises after waiting for 2 weeks of a big-bang feature to arrive and the website or app usually launches with a bit of an anti-climax ... GREAT, I say! We know where we all are with that approach.

» I ITERATE

Take all the above sections and draw them in a circle and imagine that cyclic process happening every few days, maybe even daily! That is an iteration. I do many, many of those in my projects so good communication is essential. Meetings are few and far between, I work with teams who may be geographically dispersed as physical location is not important on a web project - especially a short term one - and the tools we all use in a team or in combination with the clients are easy to use online and often free. I encourage Skype, Basecamp, Backpack, Google Docs and any other communication tool which helps us all iterate without irritation!

If you are still with me, I hope I have piqued your interest so get in touch directly (see link below) or feel free to read more about this stuff on my blog and in my tweets - links in the right column.