Custom Healthcare Websites

When you are ready to customize your message and design, The Doctor's Bag is right there for you. 

Project Methodology

The Doctor’s Bag uses a proven methodology for all of our projects, scalable to match the scope of your project. Our strict adherence to this process minimizes delays while maximizing the quality of our deliverables, ensuring your satisfaction with the final product. The methodology is comprised of five phases, each containing key project milestones: Discovery, Interface Design, Development, Quality Assurance, and Delivery.

As part of its process-driven approach to your project, The Doctor’s Bag uses a web-based project collaboration solution to manage projects online. The project manager and development team can login to the project area to review project contacts, resources, calendars, meeting notes, and status online. A series of sign-offs at major project milestones ensure that you know exactly how the project is progressing.

A project manager, who coordinates allocation and expenditure of project resources, oversees each project. The Doctor’s Bag will provide you with regular status updates, benchmarking the work accomplished against milestones. We will hold regular project status meetings either in person or via conference calls.

Discovery: Content

The first and most critical phase of the project is the Discovery phase, during which your dedicated project manager will meet with key personnel to learn more about your website needs. During this time functional requirements are defined and site architecture will all be established.

Content Discovery

Content Discovery is one of the most important exercises during the project. The goal of this phase is to get answers to learn more about the following:

  • The type of content you have and how should it be organize
  • The frequency that content will be updated
  • Who will be updating the content
  • Primary and secondary navigation topics and order
  • General content flow

Answers to these questions will result in a Content Map, which will be the basis for information architecture/sitemap work.

Information Architecture/Sitemap

Using the information garnered from content discovery, the The Doctor’s Bag team will create a site map that that includes our recommendations for the website. The sitemap documents:

  • Main navigation labels
  • Main navigation order
  • Sub-navigation labels
  • Sub-navigation order
  • General user flow
  • 'Map' of identified site pages

Discovery: Design

During the second portion of Discovery Phase is complete, Design begins using the Content Map and Site Map as the over-arching "road map" for the project. The Doctor’s Bag's design team will follow our proven, iterative design methodology to arrive at the new look and feel of a website. Font selection, color scheme, and navigation approaches are all aspects to be explored within the established information architecture.

Brainstorming

The first stage of the design process focuses on researching design concepts and directions. The purpose of this exercise is to become familiar enough with your existing image, style, branding and identity to appropriately recreate it as "look and feel" for the site.

Roughs

Based on the Brainstorming meeting, the most promising design directions are refined and mocked up. The outcome of this process is the development of rough designs. The roughs are meant to give you very different options for the new look and feel of the site. The designs are truly rough in that navigation schemes, colors and layouts are all in the process of being explored. At the end of this stage, The Doctor’s Bag will present design concepts, including a home page and a more complex sub-page. Most of the major design elements are identified during this step.

Comprehensive

Based on feedback from the Rough Design Phase, The Doctor’s Bag will create more comprehensive designs, which are tighter, more detailed explorations of the preferred rough concepts. At the end of this stage, The Doctor’s Bag will present design concepts each including a home page, and a complex sub-page.

Final Comprehensive

After another round of revisions based on feedback, a final comprehensive design of both the home and significant sub-page will be created representing the look and feel, color scheme, navigation scheme, homepage layout and sub-page layout for the entire site. Once the final design has been established, The Doctor’s Bag will move into the development phase of the project.


Development

Now that the design has been finalized, it is time to build the new website in the CMS (Content Management System). The Doctor’s Bag will provide your practice with the  CMS (Content Management System enabling personnel to create and update text, images, hyperlinks and menu items throughout their site. The  CMS offers a way for the content owner to stay in control of distributing critical business information via their website. The  CMS is:

  • Easy to use thanks to the WYSIWYG interface, enabling anyone familiar with word processors to easily create and maintain content.
  • Secure requiring user names and passwords to edit.
  • Flexible to enable you to maintain established branding
  • Convenient since you now have the power in your hands.

HTML Build structure

The site will be built based on XHTML 1.0 Transitional format and implemented with Cascading Style Sheets, consistent with I-WAS web standards. The benefits include:

  • Fast page downloads
  • Allow for rapid changes to templates
  • Centralized control over layout and appearance
  • Increase accessibility without special coding or user-agent detection
  • Uses current and supported standards

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Development ensures that your content is independent from the output format. This means that your website will properly format on the computer screen consistent with browser compatibility listed below. Additionally, web pages directed to a printer will properly format to the standard 8.5" X 11" paper.

Visual Layout Browser Compatibility

Based on current usage statistics, The Doctor’s Bag designs for 1024x768 monitors and supports the following browsers:

  • Firefox 2+ (any platform)
  • Internet Explorer 6+ (Windows)
  • Safari 3+ (Macintosh)

Quality Assurance and Delivery

Based on project scope, formal Usability Testing follows a scripted test plan that verifies user flow, layout, predictability and load time for efficiency and effectiveness. Informal usability testing occurs as part of system testing.

Cross-Browser/Cross-Platform Testing

All development initiatives undergo cross-browser and cross-platform testing to ensure projects adhere to internal compliance standards as well as any deviations identified.

User Acceptance Testing

User Acceptance Testing marks the beta version of the site. During this period final content is loaded into the Content Management System (CMS) and all aspects of the tools are tested by the admin users to ensure the site meets all the requirements of the functional specifications.

Training

Up to two hours of administrator training is included with delivery of the site.

Final Delivery/Launch

The completed site is promoted into a production environment and brought live.