Digital Orange

Five stages from first sketch to launch

Web developers, mobile developers, digital marketers and graphic designers work together at Digital Orange, a small IT and digital marketing firm. It works mainly with businesses that want a website or mobile product without the cost of a large agency, and it describes its prices as affordable. Each project moves through the same five stages, so the client knows what comes next at every point.

Planning and mock-up design

The first stage begins with the client's goals. The team gathers the information it needs, suggests changes that would benefit the project, and settles on a direction it considers sound. The designers then sketch the layout and produce fully responsive designs that adapt to phones, tablets and desktop screens. The client checks these mock-ups before any code is written, so changes are made while they are still cheap to make.

Development

Once the design is approved, developers build the solution. The firm describes each build as custom-made for the client rather than assembled from a template. Development covers both the front end that visitors see and the back-end logic that keeps the site or app working behind it.

Testing and quality assurance

Before anything is published, the product is checked for function and for responsiveness. The firm tests how the system behaves internally and how it looks and works for visitors on different devices, and it treats quality assurance as a separate stage with its own sign-off. Only when that stage passes is the product ready to launch.

Launch and continuing work

Launch is the point at which the site or app goes live. The firm says it keeps working on its clients' products after that point and tries to improve them over time, rather than treating delivery as the end of the relationship.

Services that sit around the build

Alongside web and mobile development, the firm offers hosting and domain services, digital branding, search engine optimization, social media marketing and custom development work. A client can commission one of these alone, or have the same team design, host, promote and maintain a product from start to finish. Keeping the whole chain with one supplier means the team that built a product can also host it and promote it.