Our Approach
This page details how we typically go about the various aspects of our work. We
hope that it will give you a better idea of whether you would like to work with
us on your project.
We offer all our potential clients a free initial meeting with no obligations.
If it's convenient for you, we're happy to come to see you at your place of
business.
The purpose of the first meeting is to find out about your requirements and
discuss how they might be addressed. The meeting will provide enough
information to allow us to give you a realistic estimate of the costs involved.
If you think that you might be interested in proceeding, we will then work with
you to create a detailed specification for the project.
We recognise that different clients have different priorities and budgets, and
we will ensure that we concentrate on the areas which are of greatest
importance for you. For example, if you're creating an online shop for your
business, it's likely that the design, styling and branding will be key. All
clients are entitled to expect that their website be easy to use, and many
organisations (particularly in the public sector) will require that the website
be coded according to a particular accessibility standard.
Once this is complete, we can provide you with a fixed-price quotation for the
work. You needn't fear that our highly customisable approach will result in a
high price. Although every website is treated as a separate project, we don't
try to re-invent the wheel. If any of the features you require are similar to
features that we have previously implemented for another client, it's often
possible to save time and money by examining whether any or all of the
previously written code can be re-worked and enhanced.
Streaming
video and audio on the
Lagoon
Watersports site, using Windows Media Server technology
Once the quotation has been accepted, we will start building your website on our
development server. We will give you a login to allow you to monitor the work
in progress at any time.
We generally develop projects using a popular combination of Microsoft
technologies, namely ASP.NET for the website itself and SQL Server for the
underlying database. This gives your website an added degree of portability and
flexibility; in the unfortunate event that you ever require a company other
than Tastic to take over the hosting and support of your website, you will find
that there are thousands of companies worldwide who also know the Microsoft
technologies inside out.
When the development work is complete we will conduct a thorough test of your
website and invite you to do the same. The next step is to get your site live!
Your website will need to be hosted on a suitable web server. We would be
pleased to host the system ourselves if you wished, or to provide the website
and database for installation on the servers of another hosting company of your
choice. In our experience, we and our customers both benefit if we host a
system that we have developed:
-
Responsibilities are clearer when fewer organisations are involved; the
customer has a single point of contact
-
Problems are resolved more quickly and easily, as we have full control over the
hosting server
-
The processes of development, testing and installation of the site (and any
future additions and new features) is simpler and therefore cheaper.
-
As a bonus, the Tastic hosting package also includes unlimited email addresses
and full statistical reports.
Here's a quick summary of our hosting arrangements:
Your website
could live here!
-
Our live servers are located at the Global Switch facility in London, where
they are maintained by Mistral Internet
engineers.
-
The Global Switch facility was chosen for its excellent connection to the UK's
main fibre backbone, serving to optimise the responsiveness of the servers to
users from the UK and abroad.
-
The iServer system stores the Client's websites and databases on Mistral's
Storage Area Network (SAN). In the event of a server chassis failure, the
failed server would be replaced without any effect on the customer's business
data by simply 'pointing' another iServer chassis at the customer's disk image
on the SAN.
-
All live websites and databases are also replicated to a backup server in
Lewes. In the event of major disruption in London, the backup copies would be
safe, allowing the sites to be rebuilt quickly.
-
Mistral provides us with access to a 24x7 support team who are available to
investigate any networking or hardware fault.
Our core business hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday, and we can
always be reached by telephone during this time. Outside these hours, we would
nevertheless encourage you to contact us by email, as we may still be able to
address the problem before the next working day.
Many of our clients see the launch of the website as just the first step, and
have plans to develop and enhance the site long into the future. We're happy to
divide the development of the site into easily managed phases, and look forward
to a long-lasting business relationship with our customers. We're pleased to
have worked for some of our clients for many years.
The notes above are just intended to give you an idea of how we normally work,
but we will always try to be flexible enough to meet your particular
requirements. If your project requires a more formal project plan, or the use
of different technologies, or a dedicated web server, or a more comprehensive
support service, we will be delighted to discuss the options with you.
Now you've seen how we work, we'd like to introduce you to some
of our clients...