<strong>ENVISIONING THE WEBSITE:</strong><br /><br /> 
The first phase of the project is to write a narrative vision statement for the web site. At NC we lay great emphasis on this phase of web site development. It is most important to design a web site in accordance with a well thought out plan. Adopting a bottom up approach to a design is easier, but cannot result in the development of a sophisticated web site. A bottom up approach results in a suboptimal system with stand alone modules, non-standard design elements, and disjointed pieces of code. It is most important to have the web site envisioned and designed on paper as many design and architecture issues are addressed at this stage.<br /><br />
The narrative vision will think through the graphic design, navigation and flow of the web site. It will also analyze the architecture of the information systems underlying the web site to recommend an optimal web site structure that is intelligent, user friendly and intuitive to use. <br /><br />
A narrative vision will address following issues:<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;a)&nbsp;  Site Map and architecture<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;b)&nbsp;  Navigation and flow<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;c)&nbsp;  Graphic Design options suggesting the look and feel of the site<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;d)&nbsp;  Analysis thinking through the design issues and reasoning to support design and architectural choices.<br /><br />
<strong>GRAPHIC DESIGN:</strong><br /><br />
Graphic design will include the following:<br /><br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;a)&nbsp;  Creating and modifying visual options. In case the client has a brand book or brand color or look and feel guidelines, this along with the creative ideas discussed in the brainstorming meetings, will be used to create several design options. These will be presented to the team at the client. Based upon mutual discussions these will be modified to arrive at the final visual appearance of the web site. Two initial brain storming meetings are budgeted.<br /> 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;b)&nbsp; Graphic design will address layout, colors (based upon brand book/guidelines), flow and navigation, graphics. <br /><br />
<strong>EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN:</strong><br /><br />
	The fundamental design issues will be addressed by the one time design process including the Narrative Design Document and the one time graphic design that will proceed in accordance to it. Thereafter, an evolutionary approach will be taken to actually extend the overall design vision and high level design approach to all aspects of the web site.  After the basic high level design issues of visual design, navigation, flow, and structure are addressed, additional design toppings including the following will be evaluated for relevance. Not all of the following add value and improve a website and after the brainstorming meetings these options will be evaluated to determine if any are relevant to the client’s needs. Please note that flash animations require substantial extra work which will be budgeted for separately in case the client decides to incorporate flash animations into their website. <br /><br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;a)&nbsp;Banners<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;b)&nbsp;Buttons<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;c)&nbsp;Images<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;d)&nbsp;Flash Animations<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;e)&nbsp;News Letters<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;f)&nbsp;Screen shots of work done<br /><br />
In addition to the above additional incremental evolutionary design avenues will be identified in the initial one time design process.<br /><br /> 
<strong>DESIGN PROCESS AND DELIVERABLES:</strong><br /><br />
Two initial brain storming meetings are budgeted. In these meetings design ideas will be discussed and new creative ideas will be generated. The purpose of these meetings is to question the assumptions of the client, share information about the latest trends in web design, lend NC’s heavy experience in design and web development to the client to explore previously un-thought ideas so as to expand the vision for the web site.<br /><br />
The end result after these initial brainstorming meetings will be to arrive at a very precise picture of the design for the site. These ideas will then be articulated by NC into design options that will be emailed to the client. Two design options will be provided for the home page and two for the inside page templates. The client will then peruse these design options and email back suggestions for change. A third meeting can be held at this stage to review the design options. After this review meeting NC will incorporate the client feedback into the design options and email them back to the client for final approval.<br /><br />
It is expected that the client will provide swift and timely approval and upon formal approval the NC team will proceed to translate the approved designs to CSS designs which are the cutting edge way to do graphic design for web sites.<br /><br /> 
Post the approval, design changes will be difficult to do as they are to be done in CSS rather than on the design itself and will therefore be budgeted separately. It is highly recommended that the client fully finalize the design at the pre approval stage.<br /><br /> 
Once the client has approved the design options and provided the content, these will be implemented on the web site. <br /><br />
<strong>CONTENT:</strong><br /><br />
<strong>Content Hierarchy:</strong><br /><br />
It is most important in the new media of the internet, to be able to prioritize content. This is because; web users have a very limited span of attention. Therefore they come to a web page and need to be hit with the most important content immediately. If the important content is buried heavily under menu and sub menu items, then it is highly unlikely that the target audience will ever get to see it. Hence the crucial role of content hierarchy.<br /><br />
The client is responsible for providing NC with a word document that contains the hierarchy of content. This is created by prioritizing the content of the organization with the most important key words listed first and then sub content areas listed below them, followed by sub areas and so on. This will be translated into the Menu system on the web site. This process will result in the client thinking about the positioning of their organization and thinking through how the content on the web site is to be presented. The end result of this process is a word document that contains this hierarchy of content which the client must supply to NC, which NC will use to create the menu systems.<br /><br />
Thereafter the client must also provide the actual content of the pages that will appear when a user clicks on a menu item. Should the client require content development services including content development or proof reading, these must be budgeted for separately. <br /><br />
<strong>Types of Content:</strong><br /><br />
Two types of textual content should be included on the web site: <br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;a)&nbsp;Static Content: Web sites generally contain some static content. These include pages of information that are not subject to rapid change. Examples of these are the Contact Us, About Us, Resumes and such pages. The way these are generally approached is that the client provides the edited and proof read content. This content is integrated by NC in the also provided Content Hierarchy (As described in the prior section)<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;b)&nbsp;Dynamic Content: Often times it so happens that the client’s content is not really static and is subject to change quite often. In this case static content is not really feasible because once the content changes, the web pages will become obsolete. In this case there are several possibilities for dynamic content. These include the provision of database driven dynamic content or the use of a Content Management System. The relevance of these is to be determined after the initial brain storming meetings. In case any custom development or CMS integration is required cost estimates will be provided as a separate line item in this proposal.