Design & Build |
1. Planning
timeline to completion: minimum 10 working days
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Spending time planning is the best investment of time you can make to ensure your website is a success
We work together to uncover your business's strengths and come up with your online strategy
Too many website projects dive straight into what images, colours and fonts to use, and forget that your website is a business tool that needs a powerful strategy, so that it can achieve amazing results from the moment you go live. Just like you wouldn’t get your builder to construct your house without a set of plans, you wouldn’t start designing a website without a carefully planned strategy.
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Meet the planners: real people, who understand business + what it takes to make your website successful
Zeald’s website planners come from a wide range of backgrounds including marketing, journalism, recruitment, IT and Media. They all share a natural curiosity & desire to uncover what makes your business tick and how best to convey this to your customers online.
They’ve all grown up with the internet at their fingertips, which combined with their unique business backgrounds, makes planning websites almost second nature to them.
They specialise in putting themselves in your customer's shoes and asking the question - “Why would I do business with you?” Having been in your business for a long time this process of looking in from the outside is always beneficial.
Staying up to date with Google’s changes and the latest online marketing trends is a full time job. The website results specialists go through regular training session to share the latest online marketing strategies and discuss what works and what doesn’t. They can then inject this knowledge into your website plan.
“The 3 hour session went by so fast. Not too fast that it was ineffective, but we had so much to talk about and plan. I left feeling very exhilarated and excited about seeing the design.”
Natalie Tolhopf, Crown Institute
Two key objectives
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Gain a deeper understanding of your business by building on what you’ve already covered with your business consultant
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Create a clear and concise framework for your website which will be used by the whole Zeald team and you and your team to build your website
To achieve this, your planner will take you through the following steps
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Unique Value Proposition - Uncover the core reasons why a visitor on your site would stay on your site to learn more and then take your desired action
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Pathway -Defines how we will take a new visitor by the hand and lead them through your site, ensuring the view all the information they need to proceed with doing business with your company.
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Trust - Consider the trust building elements e.g. testimonials, reviews that will encourage visitors to take action
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Promote - How will your target customer learn about the presence of your website and what will prompt them to visit it
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Sitemap - Identify the most important pages on your website and what order they should go in
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Design - How you want the website to look and also provide you with a few ideas of our own.
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Wireframe - We start putting the website elements together. The main point of this tab is to give our designers an indication of what is important for your business and the “feel” that we want to get across
Handy tips to ensure a smooth and effective planning processTo get the most out of the website planning session it helps for you to:
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You don’t have to disrupt your day and leave your office or home to plan your website
We have developed a streamlined process to remotely plan your website. We have a range of tools at our disposal to make this straightforward and effective. Whether or not you choose to wear your dressing gown is up to you!
- Screen Sharing Software
Planning your website remotely saves you time, petrol, and is better for the environment. If you would prefer to have a face to face planning session, you can arrange a time to meet at our Tawa drive office.
Every plan is of the highest quality
Your website planner will capture everything discussed and agreed upon in the plan into an online worksheet. This will be reviewed by you and any other relevant members of your team.
After the plan is complete we review it with another team member. Having another website specialist with a fresh set of eyes check each plan ensures every plan we complete is of the highest quality before it’s passed on to our designers.
Once the ‘website plan’ document is finalised the Website Results Specialist will submit the plan to the Zeald Designer in charge of designing your new website. Our Production team then uses the plan as a guiding document to assist in the production of the website.
The plan also contains a detailed blueprint of the content that will need to be created for your new website by either yourself or Zeald (depending on what option you have chosen).
2. Design
Meet the Designers: they translate your plan into a beautiful results-driven website
timeline to completion: minimum 10 working days
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Zeald’s website designers live and breathe design and creativity. They are extremely passionate about what they do, and are always on the search for inspiration.
They like to try out new ideas, and quickly know what works, and what doesn't. They are constantly striving to make things better. Keeping designs fresh is important for good design.
Our designers have a unique ability to design beautiful looking websites, that also are functional and results-focused.
User experience is one of the most important factors a web designer and client have to discuss when designing a new website. “It's really easy to get caught up in a pretty design, but like any creative work, there will be someone interacting with it on the other end- if you don't factor your target customer in, then I think the design loses its purpose.”
They like to try out new ideas, and quickly know what works, and what doesn't. They are constantly striving to make things better. Keeping designs fresh is important for good design.
Our designers have a unique ability to design beautiful looking websites, that also are functional and results-focused.
User experience is one of the most important factors a web designer and client have to discuss when designing a new website. “It's really easy to get caught up in a pretty design, but like any creative work, there will be someone interacting with it on the other end- if you don't factor your target customer in, then I think the design loses its purpose.”
In the design phase, a Zeald Designer will create a clear visual of how the new website will look. Your website homepage is designed to look professional, and successfully represents your brand in the online world. This will be used as the basis for the design of the rest of your website.
Your Designer investigates and interprets your brand using the plan, to produce a draft of the website homepage. They use their expertise to make sure the website is user & search engine friendly, while making sure it looks good and is easy to manage by you.
The Designer will send you a copy of the first draft of the website homepage. Once approved and the design is complete, it will be sent to you in the form of an animated presentation. Please ensure that you read the information within this presentation to understand the rationale behind your proposed website design.
3. Design Review
timeline to completion: 10 working days (subject to mutual availability)
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If you are happy with the proposed design you may let the Designer know and the team will be given the ‘go ahead’ to proceed with the next phase in the ‘build’ of the new website.
If you have any queries or would like to see any changes to the proposed design, (you may have to gather the feedback from other members in your team) note these changes down; they may be scribbles on a printout or in an email. When you have all your notes ready you can then schedule a virtual design review with your Designer.
A virtual design review is where you connect to the Designer’s computer using your own computer and then work alongside the Designer (virtually) to review and finalise the design of your website.
There is a link at the end of your design presentation that provides you access to your Designer's calendar so that you can find a day and time that suits you and your team.
The virtual design review may sound quite intimidating, but it is actually very easy and very satisfying. The Designer will send you and email with a link for you to click. You then click a few buttons to connect to the Designer’s machine and you’re away!
If for any reason a virtual design review is not possible then the designer will complete the design review process with you manually over the phone.
The virtual design review allows the Designer to clarify each of your change requests and point out any potential issues or let you know how such changes could impact the design. The virtual design review is a very quick and efficient method for conveying changes, discussing changes, making changes and reviewing changes. This method ensures that there is no miscommunication and can save you going back and forth by email or phone.
Please Note. You are welcome to send any feedback to your Designer before the session but your Designer will not begin making any of the design changes before the meeting. The Designer will wait for the meeting to clarify the requests and discuss them with you before any changes are made.
Once you are satisfied with the design, the Designer will send you a copy of the finalised design and the team will be given the ‘go ahead’ to proceed with the next phase in the 'build' of the new website.
The completion of this step is impacted heavily by how quickly the design is reviewed and approved. Make sure you allocate some time (1 hour) in advance for the virtual design review.
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Learn from our experience
Many clients spend months polishing and perfecting their website before publishing it. Meanwhile their old website becomes more out-dated, and the new site and customers suffer for it. Their intentions are somewhat understandable:
- They want to make it perfect
- They’re concerned they won’t receive support after it is live, or have to pay for help
- They see the website as a one off project. Once it is complete they don’t expect to touch it again for another 3 years. It needs to be 100% complete
Learn more...
4. BUILD
Meet the Website Builders: they translate your design into code, and get it live on the internet.
timeline to completion: minimum 10 working days
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Zeald’s website developers are a highly skilled bunch of people, who are the middlemen between your design and the computer. They have both a technical and creative ability, translating your design into code, a language your computer understands.
Web Developers are techy-geeks and problem solvers. They enjoy making things, and seeing a design come 'alive'. While you don't deal with them directly, you can rest-assured that they are silently working away on your website.
The web is an exciting industry to work in. The Website developers at Zeald are passionate about new trends and emerging technology, ensuring they deliver forward-thinking products in an ever-changing online environment.
In the build phase, the website design is turned into website code so that the website can be successfully displayed over the Internet. The website code is then tested extensively to ensure that it does not contain mistakes.
The build phase is pretty simple, and does not require any of your input. All that you need to do is to sit back and let the website programmers do their work. At the conclusion of the build phase you will notified by your project coordinator when the construction is finished.
Other Notes: There are lots of other tasks that you can begin while the website is being constructed. Make sure you start to work through our help site, which has plenty of how-to guides. These guides will give you an excellent understanding of your new website system. If you are creating the content for the website yourself you should look to start this as soon as possible.
5. LOAD
Meet the Website Administrators: they help you set up your website so you can get it live!
timeline to completion: variable: minimum 10 working daysrequirements: have content ready for loading/read how-to on the help websiteon completion: your website will be ready for launch! |
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A Zeald Website Administrator's ability to be both patient and well organised is key to the success of their role.
Even if you are a complete computer-novice, the web-admins will soon show you that the Zeald CMS system is extremely easy to use.
The ability to keep your content fresh and up-to-date is a key feature of a Zeald website. We want to help you do it yourself, so you don't have to ask to make minor changes.
If you need more hand-holding or if writing is simply not your specialty, Zeald can help you with your copywriting, loading your content, or even your photography for an additional cost to your standard Zeald website package.
The exciting part of this phase is your website can go live to the public, and you can start generating results for your business.
In the loading phase there are two different steps that need to be completed.
- The content for your new website needs to be finalised.
- The content needs to be loaded onto your new website.
If you have elected to have Zeald help create and/or load your content you will be contacted by a Zeald website administrator to arrange for this to happen.
Alternatively, if you have elected to complete this part of the process yourself, then it is at this stage that you will finalise your content and load the images and text and any other forms of content that you would like to see appear on your new website.
This is a lot easier than you probably imagine. Every Zeald website comes with access to online how-to guides that clearly outline how to add, edit and delete content within your website. As long as you know how to use a word processor (i.e. Microsoft Word™) you should have no trouble with content loading.
At the conclusion of the content creation and loading phase you will need to set a number of final ‘preferences’ for your new website. Preferences include things like company name, address, phone numbers, delivery information etc.
If you would appreciate assistance with the content loading or copywriting and photography aspects of the website build process, we have content loading, copywriting and photography services available at an additional cost to the standard Zeald website package. Contact Zeald Support for further information and guidance.
Other Notes: If you are getting Zeald copywriters and website administrators to create and load your content then you will be advised by your project coordinator as to the timeline and requirements for completion of these tasks. |
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