To give you a better understanding of what you can expect when you start to work with us, we have laid out phases of a typical project at Everylution. Timing for the whole cycle depends on your particular requirements. Typically, a smaller project would take about two or three weeks. More complex websites may take from one to three months.
Phase I. PLAN
Everylution can assist you with planning your new or enhanced web and security environments and can provide assistance for associated high- and low-level designs.
First, we will gather requirements from you. The result of this phase is a set of documents which fully describe the functionality of your website as it is envisioned at this point. Functional specifications are often also referred as "specs", "functional requirements", or "project scope".
The length of this phase depends on the originality of your project. In some cases you may want to save some time and money and let us decide how exactly elements of the website are implemented. In other cases your input is invaluable and will help us define more accurately the timing of the next phases and the budget of the whole project.
To give you a little example of defining specs.
Let's say, you want to have visitors to create an account on your website by filling in a simple registration form. Usually those forms have at least email and password fields. However, we may ask you additional questions like:
- What other fields does it have (name, phone, address, etc.)?
- Which fields are required and which are optional?
- What languages are supported in name field?
- How strict the password rules should be? Make them too strict and new users will not complete the registration and leave the site. Make them too weak and your site might be insecure.
- Is verification email or SMS required after the form is submitted?
There are many other options how an online registration form may be implemented. We need to know which option is better for you before we start programming it.
Everylution will guide you through the process. We keep in mind your industry, scale of the project, your data, expected audience, and other aspects which affect how your website will behave in real life once it goes public. We will make suggestions and prepare the documents. It is important to note that you will always know your options.
Once you approve the specs, we start the next phase.
Phase II. BUILD
We start programming back-end functions. At the same time, we define navigation, page layouts, and then work on graphical design. Most of the work here happens behind the scenes except, of course, that you'll approve graphical design.
Once we feel that we have achieved the goals defined in the specs, we will do full testing of the website. During the testing step we will try to crack the site security by imitating various cyber-attacks.
The result of this phase is a website which complies with the functional specifications defined in Phase I.
It is not publicly visible yet and might not have all content. However, it is a completed piece of work, ready for your review and for a test drive.
After successful testing the website is almost ready, but still not visible to public or to search engines. It runs in our "sandbox" environment and only our developers and you have access to it. We or you can populate it with the real content.
We will ask you to try the system and give us your feedback one more time before the site becomes visible to the world. Depending on your feedback, we might do some adjustments to functionality or to the design.
At the end of this phase your website is ready to go live.
There are several things to be done before we can flip the switch and launch your website.
After all steps are completed, we launch your website. It may take a few hours before it will be accessible from around the world. Note: in some cases, it may take up to 48 hours for information to propagate around the globe, but usually it happens much faster.
We will also provide you with documentation for your system. That includes:
- Functional specifications
- System's installation requirements and configuration
- Developer's documentation (for some cases)
- User manual (for some cases)
They describe how your system operates and how to install and configure it properly.
Those documents are irreplaceable if in the future you will need to make changes to the website.
Phase III. OPERATE
After your website goes live, you will start collecting information and receiving input from your visitors or customers. It usually takes about two weeks to make sure that the website works as expected and if something needs to be changed. We will support you during this 2-week period for free.
During the operation you normally face 2 events:
1. Technical problem – should be covered by 3-month standard warranty or a separate Technical Support Agreement with Everylution
2. Change request – a part of normal operation process usually maintained by the customer or delegated to Everylution in the terms of a separate Professional Services Agreement.
Standard Warranty
We put our reputation on the line. 3-month-guarantee to ensure you have confidence, we give our website clients a warranty that underpins the whole site's operation for three months from the point when your new website goes live. That guarantee we give in certain confidence that the quality of our work will reward you with an excellent product and a site that will serve you into the future.
What’s covered?
Broken links, error messages or site performance problems (although if your site is hosted on a server you have chosen, server issues would be excluded)
Download or page visibility problems due to browser incompatibilities
Content Management System (CMS) problems, database, e-commerce system or structural issues
Failure of the website to operate to technical standards
Restoration of your forms or pages in the unlikely event of a hacking attack
What’s not covered?
All issues relating to third party hosting systems, DNS errors or other problems outside our control
Issues occasioned by customer error or misuse of the website
Problems with third party components built into your website over which we have no control
Any issue that could legitimately be viewed as being part of the terms of a support contract (a separate agreement which provides facilities for us to improve and update the site, create and upload banners or other site images)
Technical Support
The Everylution Support Help Desk can assist you with technical or website issues. Our service contracts are simple and enable you to have confidence that the website is kept up to date technically, is maintained regularly and is performing at its best.
Professional Services
If for some reason you are not in a position to run your site or just willing to delegate that activity, Everylution would be happy to help you with that. In the terms of Professional Services contracts you can delegate the task to our team of professionals.
ADDITIONAL COSTS.
Besides investing in the website's development, there are some other costs related to day-to-day operations.
Domain Name
Every site in the world has its own unique domain name or URL. That's how people find you. Two examples are www.google.com or www.facebook.com. Ownership of domain names is regulated by an international organization, ICAN. There are resellers from which you can purchase a domain name. Prices start at approximately $15 per name per year.
Hosting
Once a website is ready to go public and you've purchased a domain name, you will need to rent a "virtual space" at a web hosting company. That's where your system will reside and will be available to the rest of the world. Depending on your project's scale and expected traffic, prices can vary from as low as $15 per month to few hundred dollars a month or even higher. There are plenty of options to best suit your needs as you consider expansion.
Copyrighted Materials
If necessary, we can purchase licenses for copyrighted material: stock images or proprietary software. Although most of our work is based on free open source software, there are some cases when it is more efficient to invest some small amounts into licenses.