Process
Five phases from idea to a website that works
What happens in each phase, what you get at the end of it and what we need from you. No surprises, no black boxes.
Phase 1/5
Discovery and goals
What should the site achieve?
We start with a conversation about your business: who your customers are, what the site should get them to do, and how we'll know whether it does.
We review your current site, content, search terms and the systems the site has to talk to — accounting, stock, payment gateways or bookings. The result is a clear picture of the scope before a single screen is drawn.
What you get
- Written goals and success measures
- A site structure and content inventory
- An overview of systems and integrations
- A plan for scope, phases and cost
What we need from you
- An hour or two for a working session
- Access to your current site and analytics, if you have them
- Honesty about what isn't working today
Phase 2/5
Design
Structure and look you can try
Structure comes first: which pages, in what order, and what goes on each. Then the look — built on your brand, or shaped together with you.
You see the design at real sizes, on phone and desktop, and can click through it before the build starts. Changes are cheapest at this stage.
What you get
- Wireframes for the key pages
- Visual design for mobile and desktop
- A design system: colours, type and components
- A clickable prototype to test
What we need from you
- Your logo, colours and other brand assets
- Feedback in review sessions
- One person who makes the final call
Phase 3/5
Build
Fast, accessible code
We code the site from the design. Performance, accessibility and SEO are part of the build, not an add-on at the end.
Integrations with your systems are built and tested in a test environment with realistic data. You get a staging site and can follow the work as it grows.
What you get
- A staging site you can review at any time
- Integrations with accounting, payments or other systems
- Technical SEO: headings, descriptions, structured data (markup that helps search engines read the page) and an XML sitemap
- Performance and accessibility testing
What we need from you
- Copy and images — or a decision that we write or source them
- Access to the systems we connect, such as DK, Regla or Payday
- A read-through of the staging site
Phase 4/5
Launch
Live without surprises
Before the site goes live we work through a final checklist together: content, forms, integrations, redirects from old addresses and measurement.
Redirects help keep your visitors and search rankings when addresses change. We keep a close eye on things for the first days after launch.
What you get
- Launch on your domain
- Redirects from old addresses (301)
- Google Search Console setup and a submitted sitemap
- A walkthrough of how to update the content
What we need from you
- Access to your domain or DNS settings
- Final sign-off for launch
Phase 5/5
Care and improvement
The site keeps getting better
A website is never quite finished. We watch performance and security updates, and look at how the site is doing against the goals we set at the start.
Hosting, backups and operations can be handled by Gagnaver, the same company’s hosting service, so you have one point of contact from the first meeting to day-to-day running. Improvements are driven by data, not hunches.
What you get
- Updates and security maintenance
- A review of results against the goals
- Improvement proposals, ranked by benefit
What we need from you
- Feedback from customers and staff
- News of changes in the business the site needs to follow
We never start with design. We start with goals.
If we don't know what the site has to achieve, we can neither design it well nor measure whether it works. That's why the first phase matters most.
Questions about the process
How does a project start?
You send us a brief or give us a call. We have a short conversation, and if the project is a good fit you get a written proposal covering approach, plan and cost.
What do I need to prepare?
Less than you think. It helps to know what the site should achieve and to have access to your current site and domain. Copy and images can be worked on during the project.
Who will I be talking to?
The people who design and build your site, in English or Icelandic. No account managers in between.
How long does it take to build a website?
It depends on scope: the number of pages, the content and the integrations. After the first conversation you get a timeline based on your project, with dates for each phase. As a guide, a subscription website usually goes live in 2–4 weeks, a bespoke website often takes 6–12 weeks, and an online store with an accounting integration often 8–16 weeks.
Can we update the content ourselves?
We decide that together during discovery. Some teams want a content management system to edit pages themselves; others prefer us to make the changes. Both are possible.
Shall we start with your goals?
Tell us about the project and we'll come back with next steps.