To give you a better understanding of how we conduct all Shopify ecommerce projects, we've put together this page to hopefully explain it from a high level.
Not all jobs require all steps in our workflow but each one serves a necessary role in ensuring smooth execution of your project.
As is shown in the diagram above, we follow a structured workflow that allows us to carry out each project as efficiently as possible. It prevents a number of issues that can creep in when work is done in an ad-hoc fashion and without necessary forethought.
Not every step of our workflow is a laborious task but each one is necessary.
We're often working on stores doing many thousands of dollars in transactions per day and clumsy mistakes can be costly and not worth cutting corners for.
This is a document that only needs to be signed once in our working relationship (unless we need to update it for some reason) and establishes the foundation of our working together going forward. It does not include any project details nor timelines nor figures. It does not oblige you to anything but it's rather an agreement that allows us to proceed with a mutual understanding of how we're going to work together.
This is a process we've made as painless as possible for you and ourselves by simply sending you a digital form to complete that furnishes us with all the information required to proceed with the project. The onboarding also only needs to be done once.
Synonymous with a quotation or proposal, the service order is the document most closely tied to the actual project and will include the following:
Each service order covers a body of work and will be the core agreement between us on what and how we're going to be doing the work, for how much and in what timeframe.
Every project requires all involved parties to be on the same page in terms of what is being done, why it is being done and how it should be done. Whether it's a functional specification, mood-boarding of designs, investigating the viability of a feature, app or some other task that will allow for the successful execution of the job, this is the phase where your project will be defined in detail.
Often the discovery phase is a standalone project, especially when the viability, scope or approach required is unclear and needs to be defined.
The look and feel will be defined in this phase where depending on the requirements of the project we'll usually produce high fidelity design mockups from which the store or feature can be built with an agreed upon layout and aesthetic. Of course all relevant devices and screen sizes will be catered for and the designs are ordinarily presented as flat images with as much visual representation of interactions (hover states etc.) as possible and practical although these are "designed" in code more comprehensively in the development phase.
Now that your project is clearly defined and the look, feel and layout for each element is clear, we'll carry out the actual coding required to achieve the desired end result.
As with any software development project, your project will be thoroughly tested by both ourselves, you and perhaps even a portion of your target audience. In this phase we'll be able to identify any issues and fix them before the project is launched.
Deployment can be as simple as "flicking a switch" but may also involve finding the right time to do it, checklists to be sure that when it's done nothing is forgotten and being at hand to quickly act should anything not work as intended. We'll hold your hand in deployment to ensure that this is a painless and seamless process.
When something new is built, we won't cast you out into the cold. Being sure that you're comfortable with the new site or feature(s) and how to use it is in everyone's best interests. Should things go wrong, we'll also be at hand to fix them or guide you in making the most what has been built for you.