* We usually begin with clients giving us a brief, and in most cases we prefer a mockup either on paper or preferably a tool like: https://gomockingbird.com/
It helps us clarify their requirements, notice the little things that would go missing or ambiguous set of requirements.
* We'd ask them to list a few sites/design they like. Based on those we'd come up with a few rough ideas, and go darwinian on it. i.e. kill the unhealthy ones, work on what we think works. Sometimes we do very basic/naive user-testing to figure out which mockups are easier to navigate. 'Cos the most 'liked' design is not always the most intuitive. And clients have a tendency to just do too much on every screen. But yeah we try to be very iterative.
* We usually begin with clients giving us a brief, and in most cases we prefer a mockup either on paper or preferably a tool like: https://gomockingbird.com/
It helps us clarify their requirements, notice the little things that would go missing or ambiguous set of requirements.
* We'd ask them to list a few sites/design they like. Based on those we'd come up with a few rough ideas, and go darwinian on it. i.e. kill the unhealthy ones, work on what we think works. Sometimes we do very basic/naive user-testing to figure out which mockups are easier to navigate. 'Cos the most 'liked' design is not always the most intuitive. And clients have a tendency to just do too much on every screen. But yeah we try to be very iterative.