The Marketing Press Process

Our last post ‘Transparency in WordPress and Business‘ started off this thing. There’s no better place to follow up that title than with us talking about our WordPress Development process.

This is our process. This process works for us and our clients. What this isn’t is something I am telling every reader that they should adhere to and rework how they do things.

With that understanding — let’s proceed.

Marketing Press breaks every project into four phases. Discovery, Design & Development, Deployment and Debrief. These four phases ensures we are on point to produce a product that works for the client’s business. If anything along the way doesn’t work, we can pinpoint where there was a breakdown in process or communication and make the correction.

Discovery

When a client for speaks with us, we make sure we are crystal clear about the goals of the project. If you’ve ever heard me speak, I am big on the three goals being Conversion, Content, and/or Community. We ask the client to prioritize the goal of the site. What are trying to accomplish? Why are we doing this?

The discovery phase to many clients is a pain in the ass. We’re forcing them to look at the business and their current site objectively. If someone engages us, but can’t answer the above questions — they are not a client we can work with.

We want to take a look at the whole picture. We dive into their Google Analytics, we talk about the competition and analyze who is doing what to make sure we are have all the information to create the best WordPress site possible.

Design & Development

Armed with all of the discovery information, only now can we make good solid brand recommendations.

The Marketing Press design team is engaged at this point so we can start laying the groundwork for a solid site. Site architecture, UX, key branding elements are put into place, wireframes, typography — all the good stuff that everyone will get to see when the site goes live.

You can design to a strategy, but you can’t always strategize to a design.

After all the pieces of the puzzle are together, we develop the new site. A typical project takes anywhere from 4-8 weeks in development based on the complexity of the site.

Deployment

When your site is designed, developed and done — we get set to launch your new WordPress site. This is an exciting time for all of us. But before the launch we have a couple more details to tend to. All links are checked, the responsive design is tested, SEO is dialed in, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools are installed. This is where all the small things that make or break a site’s launch.

Once all the details are in place — Marketing Press launched the site on the client’s hosting account. (Marketing Press always makes hosting recommendations, but hosting is always the responsibility of the client.)

Debrief

90 days after launch and the dust settles Marketing Press is still on the job. In our opinion, this is one of the most important phases of the development process. You know all the analytics and diagnostic tools we installed before the launch — now they come into play.

Marketing Press takes all of the data that has been collected, analyzes the data and double checks that the site is working for the business. If it is working — awesome and high-fives go all around. If anything seems out of whack — Marketing Press refines the site and fixes the trouble areas (and the high-fives begin.)

I know this process seems strange and out of the norm for most web developers. To Marketing Press this process makes perfect sense and yields great results.

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