Approach
The production process at Iquadart is aimed at making products that provide benefits for their owners and bring out emotions from users.
Principles
Usability and aesthetics
Usability and aesthetics are tightly interrelated. The product is to be convenient, and its look is to make the user have pleasant emotions.
Aesthetics as well as functionality performs an important function. Studies reveal that people enjoy using visually pleasant products.
Creating only custom products
We do not make use of templates. We start working on the project with studying and planning, and go on with custom designing. At the stages of programming, we apply technologies that allow us to create a flexible and scalable product.
Attention to details
Having an eye for detail is one of the main features of our team's work. This is exactly what turns a good product into a high-quality one.
Making up design around content
One of the main tasks of design is to provide the user with content in the convenient form. That is why we prepare the content together with the client before starting project planning and design.
Cutting off all the redundancies
When working over complex sites, we first start up the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that we then develop basing on users' behavior.
Process
Studying01
The objective of the first stage is doing research. Our aim is to understand how the website being created can facilitate the business and to draw up a list of clear tasks that need to be completed.
The choice of tools at this stage depends on the features of the project and can vary from studying the data of analytical tools to carrying out the Customer Journey Mapping (CJM), which describes all the encounter points of the customer and the company.
Project Planning02
At this stage, we work on the project architecture and define the technology stack.
Then, we build up the prototypes of site pages, being based on the content and information collected at the previous stage. Prototypes are an outline of the interface constructed on the principles of interaction between the user and the product.
This is how the ready-made prototype looks like.
We make an expert evaluation of the prototypes and, if required, test them out by involving users.
Designing03
At the design stage, we create not only an aesthetic picture, but also an interface that will later be convenient and pleasant to use. Design is based on the results acquired at the previous stages and meets the requirements of the HTML coding.
Custom and high-quality design contributes to the company's reputation, singles it out in a competitive environment and presents products or services in the best way.
Front-end Programming04
The next stage is making a page layout. We create semantically valid code that allows search engines crawlers to ‘understand’ the site better, so that it takes higher positions in the search results.
In order to create a responsive layout, we write a custom code. Unlike using the CSS-frameworks (i.e. ready-made sets of classes), it will allow the site to be conveniently viewed on all the intermediate resolutions. The custom approach also makes the code ‘clearer’ and the page load faster.
Back-end Programming05
We develop most of the projects by basing them on the Yii 2 framework. The framework is individually adapted to each project and, unlike the ready-made CMS, does not contain any redundant functionality. It means that a site visitor enjoys a high page load speed and an owner gets keys to project scalability and easy management.
Launch and Configuring06
At first, the working version of the site is placed on the test server of Iquadart studio. When the work is over, the site is moved to the owner’s hosting/server.
Then we:
- install the analytical tools;
- add the site to the webmaster’s panel;
- configure the 301 Redirect;
- set up the sitemap and robots.txt.
Besides installing analytical tools, we carry out their detailed configuration, so that both the client and we could monitor the achievement of the goals on the site and, thus, evaluate the effectiveness of its work.
Developing07
Launching a project is just the beginning. Further, we improve the current functionality and implement the new one.
Within the next one – three months after the launch, we collect the information about the users’ behavior and detect the inconveniences that they may come across while dealing with the site. Taking into account the data, we make hypotheses about how to improve the interaction between the user and the site. We test them out and then introduce them.