We know everyone’s process of creating a website is a little different, and we think it’s fun to share a few of those processes, revealed to us by our users. The different backgrounds, needs, jobs, and daily lives of our users lend a unique experience to each.

In Dee Teal’s case, she didn’t always know she wanted to build websites for a living.

Dee is a freelance web developer. In a previous lifetime, she worked as a personal assistant for a non-profit organization. Part of her role there included updating the website- and she took to it “like a duck to water.” However, the other aspects of her job didn’t excite her quite the same way. She took the first opportunity to head to the IT department, where she took care of all eight websites her non-profit owned, and hasn’t looked back since. Today, she freelances, and works with designers and project managers on the back end of websites. She took a few minutes to answer some of my questions.

A bit about the process.

“The first step for me is to get a map of the navigation and site structure. It helps me have a clear idea of where we’re going- I find if I can get a handle on the structure the design will lay over the top… actually design is always the last thing I look at… So when the project manager and I have the structure down then the design kicks in… (usually. It pays to be flexible…) This is where Jumpchart has been really useful to get things mapped out BEFORE we actually start the build.”

I appreciate Dee’s perspective here, because it shows having the navigation and content laid out first is not only useful for designers, but for programmers as well. Whether you’re on a one-man-team, or collaborating with others, it helps to get that part nailed down.

So what other tools does Dee use in her process?

“As far as tools are concerned I ‘m a Mac user on an MBP15in and the software I primarily use is Dreamweaver/Photoshop and Fireworks all part of the Adobe Creative Suite 4. I also use Firefox with the Web Developer Toolbar and TextWrangler/Cyberduck FTP for editing static HTML on the fly. Oh, and Jumpchart too, of course!”

Some advice.

“The biggest, best advice I ever got is to Listen. The more you listen, not just to the text but the subtext of what clients want, however crazy it may seem, the better prepared you are to be able to give them what the didn’t know they wanted… We’ve all had those clients who appear to want the world, flashing gifs included, and it’s SO tempting to shoot them down and tell them what’s best… but if you REALLY hear them, in that they really want their logo to be the thing that people remember, then you can show them how it’s done WITHOUT the flashing gif… and then everyone goes away happy…

“The other thing I think is really important is to always bear the user of the site in mind – not just the client- I do my best to educate, in the nicest possible way, the client into thinking in terms of the users rather than just in what the client wants to say with their site… Basically, if everyone’s thinking about who they’re serving (client, their public, designer/developer, their client), challenging though that can be sometimes, then, in my mind, everyone wins.”

Dee’s proof that your process needs to be flexible, but that no matter what your role in building the site or app is, it pays to get organized first.

See her work here.