The new Web is an exciting place but you may need help in one or more areas of your project. Faithable has been through the process of building, launching and growing a Christian Web 2.0 site and we want to help save you from some of the bumps and bruises we experienced along the way.

In a nutshell, here is what lies ahead:

1. IDEA

You probably already have an idea – but fleshing out the idea is something we can help you with. Before we start designing or building anything you need be 100% clear on the purpose of your product. Why does your app exist and how is it different than other solutions? It probably only needs to be a sentence or a paragraph, we aren’t talking about a 50-page requirements document. For eBible.com we wrote a short “manifesto” that formed the values and vision of the project that we often looked back at to help make big and small decisions. This type of questioning is important to make sure the project is a success and we will guide you through the process of developing your idea.

2. INTERFACE

Whoah, designing the actual user interface can’t be step #2 already you say? Welcome to Web 2.0 where the focus is finally put squarely on the end user of your website. We don’t waste our time or your money on long planning documents and fancy storyboards. A simple interface that forms the foundation of your application is where we start. Our goal is to get real software up and running as quickly as possible so people don’t spend time arguing over the theoretical. Something your team can interact with builds momentum and makes everyone confident we are on the right track.

3. CODE

Now that we have an interface that demonstrates the necessary functionality it is time to make it actually do something. Coding the logic into your application is actually one of the easiest parts of the whole process, this is our bread and butter. Please do remember that your application is going to evolve and take multiple cycles of tweaking the code and tweaking the interface to get things just right for the user to accomplish their goals. We tend to work on each project only a couple of days a week so there is time for everyone to digest and give feedback as we iterate towards the final product.

4. COPY

Back in step 2 we were already thinking about copy. Copywriting is one of the most important parts of this project eventhough most people put little emphasis on it. You have a goal with your application and in order to accomplish that you need to funnel the user through the pages and sections of your site towards that goal. If the goal is to get a user to pull out a credit card and subscribe to a paid service then the copy in every part of the site needs to reflect this. Design and copy go hand in hand and there will be more iteration here as the site becomes more intuitive and easier to use (good things!!).

5. DEPLOY

Having something that is on a development server used by 1 or 2 people at the same time was fine up to this point. But you want to launch version 1.0 or maybe a beta. Taking a web application to a production environment is something we are very experienced at and this is an important step to do right. We can help with everything from choosing the hardware or hosting company to writing the deployment scripts to adding redundancy, doing backups and the like. The key is to not overdue things at this stage because you don’t need to build a Google-sized web infrastructure before you have your 10th user. We’ll help you get it right with a plan in place to scale as your traffic does.

6. PROMOTE

Throwing up a blog and emailing your friends and family is a good start but there is more to promoting a web application than that. Our site was featured on some of the top websites and blogs out there (TechCrunch, Digg frontpage, etc) with the help of some guerilla marketing techniques you won’t find in any book. Word of mouth marketing is the best bang for your dollar and we can help you get the word out about your new baby. And don’t take Search Engine Optimization for granted – there is a lot of work to get well indexed by the big search engines … but it is well worth it.

7. SUPPORT

This is Web 2.0 which means communication needs to be 2-way. You need to and want to hear from your users so that you can create fans and continue improving your site. Supporting what you have just spent months building is going to be key and we have some ideas to make this process easier for your team and your users.

8. SCALE

This is a great step to get to. It means you have got some traction and it is time to go to the next step. Faithable has real-world experience in scaling and optimizing Ruby on Rails applications and we can help you make sure you are doing the right things to grow your web application.

If you have an idea and want our expertise to make it reality – contact us. If you are somewhere in the midst of the cycle above and want our expertise – contact us.