Seahawk is one of the biggest and best WordPress web design & professional marketing services companies in the world today, trusted by some of the top web hosting companies. Our philosophy has always been that every brand should be able to afford and get access to a professional Custom UI designed WordPress website that is unique to their brand – not using a template. We offer this at price points that compete with theme/template customization service that you will find with most agencies.
We are able to do this through our Custom UI Design PSD to WordPress using a Base Theme and Page Builder process. Seahawk continues to disrupt the WordPress web design space by constantly evolving our processes and keeping a close eye on market trends. Our custom WordPress web design process is divided into 7 phases outlined below. This is the future of WordPress.
Onboarding & Discovery Phase
Here’s what is covered under the onboarding and discovery phase:
Typeform Onboarding
We choose leverage Typeform for all of our website and onboarding forms over many other competitor form technologies. It is the best format for increasing conversions and awesome integrations. Seahawk uses an extensive Typeform questionnaire on all projects to ensure we are completely aligned with all of our customers. The questions on our onboarding forms help us collect information that will be useful to our designers and developers to deliver the most creative and effective results.
We require in-depth details of project requirements like sitemap, competitor analysis, colors, sections for homepage, logo, etc. Our project managers assist the client with this as needed on the onboarding calls. We ensure the information is accurate and thoughtful so we don’t face snags during the project.
Once this is submitted our team goes through an extensive research process of existing analytics, competitor websites, and other information submitted to ensure we deliver the most value in our design work. It is very important to collect page content upfront to prevent delays. If the customer does not have the content ready we can use “lorem ipsum” placeholder text. In the case of a website redesign the customers will sometimes request that we use the same content on their existing site.
We are also top Typeform Partners, and can assist our customers in building custom forms needed on their websites and landing pages.
monday.com Project Management
During onboarding phase our customers get access to our project management tool monday.com. Our project manager explain exactly how to use the tool with our team. Seahawk is also a top monday.com. Partner for USA and India. Check us out on the monday.com Partner Directory.
Every web design project we manage is done on Work OS where our customers can track the progress of the entire project from start to finish and collaborate closely with their Web Nest. This is one of the most advanced, yet simple project management tools on the market today and we absolutely love it here at Seahawk.
Everything we do at Seahawk is powered by monday.com. We divide all of our departments like Marketing, HR, Finance, Sales, Clients, etc into their own workspaces. It helps us stay organized and unified as a team to get s*** done!
Custom UI Design Phase
Our experienced design professionals, mostly based in Poland, use the Typeform questionnaire responses to create a custom homepage mockup design for our clients. We are very lenient on design revisions and pride ourselves on taking pain for our customers. In many cases our designs get approved on first go, but if revisions are required we do whatever it takes to ensure we execute properly on our customer’s vision.
Talent, Recruiting, and Dribbble
We sign the best and most experienced UI Designers throughout Poland to deliver beautiful designs for our customers. Poland is one of the top regions worldwide for UI design talent. There is an extensive recruiting process that takes place here at Seahawk and we leverage Dribbble to assist us with these efforts.
Dribbble is the top social networking site for UI Designers. We take great pride in our Dribbble page and have invested so much into it over the past few years. I am grateful and proud of our team for this. Check out our Seahawk Dribbble Portfolio. We have extremely high standards to join our UI Design team.
It is not easy to qualify for our UI Design team. Myself and our design scouts will do quarterly recruiting on Dribbble to hand recruit the best talent on Dribbble. This is like finding a needle in a haystack because we don’t just search for design talent, we are looking for designers who can fit our Seahawk Culture. We want designers who will do absolutely whatever it takes to delight our customers and carry out their vision.
Seahawk strongly believes in hiring professional UI Designers vs. hiring a developer to customize a template. Customers paying over $1,000 USD for a website expect high quality, professional, and custom work that is truly unique to their brand. We are very proud to provide job opportunities to our designers throughout Europe and it is our mission to make these artists the clear choice over template customization. We choose to invest heavily in design talent.
WordPress Development Phase: PSD to WordPress Using Base Theme and Page Builder
Once the design mockup is approved we begin the process of converting the UI Design to HTML and a page builder by our UI Developer. The UI Designer uploads the final design file while WordPress Pro gets the staging environment and base theme ready for the conversion. We swiftly execute our tried and trued conversion process for the homepage (PSD to WordPress using a Base Theme and Page Builder).
We can also convert more design files like Figma, XD, and others. We do a thorough quality check to ensure the design is converted to be pixel perfect, which means perfectly identical to the original UI design work that was approved. Check out this GoDaddy article and WP Engine podcast on how Seahawk is disrupting the industry with their unique PSD to WordPress process.
Web Nest
Our Web Nest is comprised of a project manager and 3 developers:
- Project Manager: Works with customer to ensure they are well informed and that all tasks are executed by UI designer and developers.
- WordPress Pro: Senior experienced WordPress developer that handles execution of the design conversion, hosting, launches, etc. Full stack developer responsible for back end, plugin development.
- WordPress Developer: Focuses on converting the design and branding with page builder and builds the custom subpages.
- UI Developer: Responsible for taking the approved UI design file and converting it to HTML and CSS code. This is the front end development.
WordPress Theme (Base Theme)
We leverage the default WordPress Twenty Twenty-One theme to build and design on as it is minimal, light, and reliable. This helps us execute on custom designs and use Elementor page builder in our process.
For the nature of our work we require a lightweight theme environment and do not use a heavy or clunky themes like many of our competitors do. We sometimes use Hello Theme and Underscores, which are also minimal themes for custom WordPress projects. As a platform agnostic company, we can also use Divi and Beaver Theme.
Subpages Development Phase Using Page Builder
Once the conversion to WordPress is complete and homepage is fully developed, Our WordPress developer begins building the subpages on Elementor according to the customers sitemap and requirements. It is always important that we get content up front at beginning of project, but in some cases we use lorem ipsum placeholder text. It is super easy for our customers to manage website tweaks on their own after we deliver a site.
Elementor is an Israeli based company backed by some big VC firms and now one of the most widely used and popular page builders for WordPress. It is our go-to page builder that powers most of our websites and they are constantly innovating on their technology. We train our developers to create professional subpages on Elementor that are uniform with the UI designers homepage design work. We are Elementor Experts and very proud of this.
As a platform agnostic company, we can also use other page builders upon request such as Beaver Builder, Divi, and more.
Launch Phase
Once the entire site is approved we move into launch phase. We take strict measures to ensure our extensive Launch Checklist is followed. We have an extensive launch checklist sequence that we follow to ensure all of our websites run smooth from the moment they launch. You are very in good hands with Seahawk developers as we are strict and disciplined with our SOPs like this.
Our WordPress Pro also sets up the hosting environment. The hosting is entirely up to the customer and we have many great solutions to recommend. We typically pick a time to launch where the site is experiencing least amount of traffic.
Some of the standard plugins we use on mostly all sites (plugins vary on custom sites):
| Plugin | Use |
|---|---|
| Gutenberg Editor | Blog |
| Elementor | Page Builder |
| Typeform | Forms |
| Wordfence | Security |
| All in One SEO | SEO |
| WP Smush and TinyPNG | Image Optimization |
| Autoptimize, WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache | Speed Optimization |
| Advanced Custom Fields | Custom Fields |
Stylepage
After the site is launched we consolidate all brand assets and design files in our cloud platform Stylepage. This helps our customer document their design systems with easy access to brand files to stay unified across all marketing efforts. We create brand style guides for all of our web customers on Stylepage. Customers can document their design systems and simply download all their brand assets and design files in one centralized link.
SeaCare
Once we launch a website then we initiate SeaCare ongoing website maintenance and support. This includes plugin updates, optimization, uptime monitoring, cloud backups, analytics, reporting, hack site repairs, and ongoing website tweaks. Rest assured, your website is fully optimized and covered under SeaCare.
Conclusion
Seahawk has the best web design plans in the world because of our unique processes and the way we differentiate our offering. We are trusted by the top hosting companies to run their professional web services and also enterprise brands. We will continue to be the leader in the space and launch thousands of custom WordPress websites ever year. Check out our UI design service plan to learn more!
