WEBSITE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

SERVING PHILADELPHIA, EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA, AND THE UNITED STATES.

Among all our strengths, web design and website development have certainly become our core competence and our most highly demanded services. We’re positive just like all our other clients that you’ll say the RDC web development team in Philadelphia “Knocked it out of the Park”.

Website development can be a very broad term and often refers to all the tasks that are involved in creating a website. From the initial conversations all the way through the requirements gathering sessions, wireframes, design, development, and testing; RDC has got your back. We treat both our local Philadelphia clients and nationwide clients like family. 

At the onset of every website development project, we work with you to understand your objectives, intended audiences, and competition. This effort will ensure that you have a well-thought out plan that supports the objectives you want to meet with your new website.

If you’re perusing the marketplace for a partner to develop your new website or enhance your current one, RDC is the team to talk to. We take pride in our work and love what we do. Even if you’re just starting to look and have questions, feel free to give us a ring. We’re more than happy to answer your questions and help you navigate the vast world of options and technologies to choose from. Take a moment to review some work samples and our web development process below.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

In order to maintain a smooth communication process throughout your project, your dedicated RDC web development team will use an online collaboration tool called Basecamp. Everything from tasks, discussions, milestones, deadlines, and file sharing for the project will be predictably organized inside your web development project within Basecamp.

We invite all of the people involved, and keep everything related to that project neatly organized. Everyone will know where everything is, what they need to do, when they need to do it, and nothing slips through the cracks. Basecamp even works over email, so anytime there is new activity, all users or only certain specified users on the project are notified via email. Those who prefer to not log in, can even reply to discussions right through their email application!

WIREFRAMES & PROTOTYPES

Once our team has all agreed on an information architecture that we’ll move forward with, we can then begin the wireframe and prototype process. The first step is typically to focus in on the main page or central location for the website or application that is being built. We then define what elements are necessary to include on that page. For example, on a website we’ll want the end product to include a slider, organized content, highlighted services, callouts, lead generators, testimonials, etc.

So great, we know what will be included, but what will the layout look like? This is where we actually design and review a wireframe specific to your company’s website. An example of a homepage wireframe can be seen to the left. Wireframes are great because we’re reviewing and making changes to a simple layout, not a large deeply coded and visually rich homepage that requires lots of time to make changes. Although the wireframe stage may be an additional step, in the long run, it saves an enormous amount of time and money. 

DESIGN

Here’s where the fun starts! Now that we’ve established all the pages, features, information, and layout we can create the mood boards and design mock-ups. During the web design phase of the project we start creating a clean modern look for the website. We do this by implementing your logo, following your branding guidelines, and using beautiful modern design, graphics, and fonts to make your new website stand out and have a professional look and feel. Once a design direction is chosen, we make sure that all the content follows the same consistent principles throughout the entire website. Upon approval, the web development stage gets underway right here in our Philadelphia offices.

Before any desktop mock-ups are created, RDC will start with mood boards that include colors, images and fonts that will help us establish the look and feel of the site. This phase will also define how the headings and sub headings will appear throughout the entire site. Upon approval of the mood boards RDC will deliver desktop mock-ups for the Homepage and the most important secondary pages.

Finally, we refine and optimize the mobile version of the website once the desktop version has been developed, tested, and approved. Developing the mobile features while building the desktop website will slow the process down. When developing in this manner, it means that anytime a change is requested, or an error or bug is found, an update needs to be made to both versions, which uses unnecessary development hours.

DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

While there are many languages and platforms to develop in, RDC typically recommends developing your new website using the WordPress platform. Over the years we’ve found that WordPress offers the largest development community, has great SEO integration, flexible E-commerce solutions, built in blogging capabilities to leverage and is also the most requested platform by clients.

One of the many benefit of creating your new website in WordPress is that you automatically get a proven and robust content management system (CMS) included in the deliverable. While our staff has a large knowledge of the industries leading languages, we primarily work around WordPress, WP associated plugins, PHP, HTML, and CSS. Give us a ring to chat about whether your project is right for WordPress or whether an alternative approach is more practical.