Continous or Iterative based model

A continuos development model is far more effective for web development than a standard cycle. Why? There are plenty of reasons, the biggest difference is that a website is mainly a marketing tool while conventional software is based on functionality. As you might have experienced websites are never finished. Great websites evolve constantly to keep up with the market. Web surfer expectations increase every year. They desire better functionality, up to date content and cool designs.

Benefits of Continous Development: Evolve your website over time

• Your website will always look new and fresh.
• Your website will get new functionality every month
• Search engime optimization needs continuity to get results
• It is affordable and easy to fit in your budget
• You get the most out of your investment. Catching up with one time developments is expensive and inefective, as soon as your are finished it will probably be obsolete.

How does it work?

The concept is simple, the customer purchases a fixed amount of hours of development per month. These hours are used to enhance your website in every aspect.

Rules

• You decide how the time will be spent on based on priorities: design, seo, functionality, content,etc
• Specific requests or support will be handled first, the remaining hours will be spent based on initial priorities
• We will carefully plan out our work for each month to get the most out of your investment
• A monthly report detailing will be delivered each month with all work performed.
• Additional hours can be purchased for a specific month if required. This is not the best option as your time package is carefully planned and executed to be eficient.
• Client and user feedback are constant with this model with each new added functionality.
• Large scale one time developments are far more stressfull

Web designer vs Web developer

I'm going to make a generalization on this topic and may not be correct on a case by case basis. Most of these titles are a figment of marketing anyway. However both developer and designer profiles exist and are usually easy to spot.

Web designers are usually artists or graphic designers who end up building websites. Their sites are flashy and creative. The downside is that they usually lack the rigor of analysis, in other words they lack engineering.

A web developer in contrast will treat your website as software and as such will follow due analysis and process. He will not sacrifice functionality, navegability or SEO over presentation.

In my case being a software engineer by trade I rely on a symbiosis with artists to build a website. I consider design a mision critical function in the software development cycle.