Its somewhat like designing your first home. You can talk to a lot of people to get ideas (probably builders are a good start) and then you work out what you really want and need.
If a "spec" home off the plan suits your needs then you go to the builder and work our how to make it all happen and sign the contract. OK, so a few of you are cringing because of previous bad experiences with some home builders. Learn from the lesson here - it is not so different really. Just as there are some good house plans built by good builders, if that house as is is just what you want then it is a good solution IF you have a reputable builder.
If you want something built to address your specific needs and it is not a standard solution then you go find yourself a good architect or technical draftsman. After a bit of discussion around what you want and with some input as to how you may be able to achieve that and even more you engage your architect to design your new home. He goes away and comes back with a house plan and specification report detailing exactly what you will have built. He doesn't cost it for you, he doesn't build it - he simply provides you with the specification from which your builder can price your new home and provide you with a schedule for delivery.
Starting to sound familiar? Make a bit of sense? Look, the disciplines of other professionals have worked and been applied universally to many other industries with great success for the simple reason that they work. The IT industry has been using these practices for decades when designing software for computer systems and now that we are seeing more complete solutions being delivered over the internet we need to approach their development in the same manner.
To cut to the chase - Top Left Designs create the deign blueprint for your new web solution. We provide a detailed specification of what is sought, what will be required to deliver to those expectations and it will address all aspects of the web site including business operations, integration with other systems, structure and marketing. It will define the performance expectations and how those can be measured and entail a plan for ongoing enhancements that will provide further improvement. Armed with this detail you as a business owner will then be able to select the web developer who can build your website to your real needs.
