Are you ready for an exciting, fresh start to the new year? How about a flexible, robust website that’s built to support your immediate goals and scale with you to meet your future business goals?
How about an app for that big idea you’ve been nurturing for the last few years?
Are you tired of stressful nights and inefficient work days caused by outdated software with technical or design debt? Do you never find the time to deal with underlying issues in your software, even though you try to get to it every month? Are you haunted by an old software system that really needs the boot? Is your workflow tied to an old software system that needs fresh eyes and energy?
What issues has your leadership team been discussing? What software solutions do you need to start 2024 off right?
Things to Know Before Starting Your Website/Software Revamp
Take a good, long look (Analysis)
Before we start addressing the problems, even long-standing ones, it’s a good idea to take a look at the big picture, at a “high level.” If you have an outside perspective to look at the issues with you and give a new perspective, that’s even better. An experienced partner in software and website development can offer you insights that clarify ideas and find innovative ways to meet your goals using the latest analysis and design techniques.
In the software development life cycle, this is the discovery phase - coming to understand the project and all its parts and figuring out what we’d like to achieve. This is where a business analyst works with you to identify key business opportunities and scaling strategies to set the project up for success.
Check out our work with Iroquois Healthcare’s WordPress website. The analysis phase defined the system requirements for a memorable visual experience with their job search feature.
Check out our work on My Essentials where Troy Web Consulting performed an in-depth Analysis phase to enhance the usability of their system.
Talk to Your Users (Research)
Identifying the main pain points in the current software, app, or website allows us to hone in on what we can do to solve those problems. Are your users missing the main Call to Action? Are there too many clicks to submit a report? Is your website ADA compliant, is it mobile responsive? Is your app simply not working? Asking questions helps us understand what is going on and what else we need to know to move forward.
Also - what are your pain points, as the stakeholders? What is blocking you from taking your company and workflow to the next level? We love having these discussions with our clients and partners - not only is it fun to collaborate and brainstorm, we love uncovering what’s going on under the surface and finding strong, robust solutions that help you scale over time.
Before starting your project or looking to hire a software partner, make sure you are documenting your system requirements. Use this template to better explain your software needs to the analysis and design teams so your pitch decks, mockups, and final deliverables share your company’s vision.
Visualize, Discuss, Iterate (Design)
At this point, we need to start looking at…what it will look like. Changes to the app or website, even if they are limited to adding a couple of screens or features, really benefit from a discussion over visualizations in the form of wireframes of high-fidelity, full-color designs.
These conversations with stakeholders clarify what we’re looking at together as a group, and elicit new ideas for future work. Making sure we have all the requirements is a must, and seeing mockups of what we will build makes this process real and exciting.
We take the time to iterate on early designs until they are right for our clients. These can be fast changes - over a few days or weeks - or longer periods of time building clickable prototypes that demonstrate entire workflows and systems.
Pitch decks are another great way for our clients to deliver ideas to investors - by creating a container that tells your story - you don’t have to tell it every time over email or in a pitch in person (unless you want to!).