What is a typical website design process? The answer depends on many factors like the type of web design, where it is needed, and the specific industry. In order to have high-quality desktop and mobile websites, you would require a different process from what you would use when building an online store. The website development process will look very familiar if you are familiar with developing a creative brief, a public relations plan, a communication plan, or a new product.
Research & Scope
The first phase is the research phase. During this time, you need to figure out your goals and who will be using the site. This includes researching both your target audience and your competition. Depending on who you are targeting, you will also want to make sure that they can access the website and that it is optimized for mobile devices. You will also need to conduct an overall analysis of the site.
Project summary
The website you are creating should have a clear project objective, which can be found in your creative brief. The website’s goal will depend on what the client wants to accomplish with the site. Whether it is to sell products, promote a product, raise awareness of a political issue or explain a process, it is always best to create your website based on this goal and not necessarily what the client wants (although the client’s needs should be taken into consideration).
Goals
Creating goals for your project is essential. It will help you determine whether you are staying within scope, add value to the project, and be used as a benchmark for future decisions.
Target audiences
During the research phase, you want to identify who will be using your website. It would be best to create user persona’s for the primary audience you are targeting, and also other secondary audiences may also use the site.
Messaging
In the research phase, you should also figure out what messages you want to send to your target audiences through your website. What does it mean for them? Does it help them meet their goals? How does it help organizations, businesses, or individuals achieve their goals, better understand a problem, or complete a task?
Competition
Take some time to research your competition. Who are they, and what do they have to offer? Do you have certain advantages over them? How can you build on this? What are their strengths? You also want to make sure that you take a close look at your competition’s website and see how it can be improved. You never want to copy their site, but you always want to use the best practices from other websites.
Creative Phase
The creative phase is where you start building out the site’s visual design and working on any wireframes or prototypes you may have created in the research phase of the website design process. You want to make sure that it is both intuitive and easy for visitors to navigate when you are developing your website. If you are looking at user interface design principles, one rule of thumb is to follow “Universal Design,” which means that your site should be accessible by everyone regardless of age or disability.
The first time visitors come to your site, you want to make sure that they can easily find the information and products they seek. If you use a shopping cart design, you should have a clear path from the homepage to checkout, allowing users to quickly fill out any payment information and purchase a product without getting lost or confused.
One of the biggest mistakes in this phase is spending too much time and effort creating a beautiful design. Remember that you want to create a website where the goal is “to sell products, promote a product, raise awareness of a political issue or explain a process”. You want to make sure that everything has been thoroughly planned out in advance and have a clear idea of what you want the site to look like.
What is important in this phase?
In this phase, it is important that you have a solid understanding of the client’s brand and how it should be represented throughout the design process. You also want to make sure that all copy or content has been thoroughly researched and edited down to the very last detail.
This phase is where you would develop any wireframes or prototypes that were developed in the research phase (if needed). You want to make sure that the site works correctly on all browsers and on both desktop computers and mobile devices.
Once you have created all of your designs, it is important to get feedback from your target audiences in order to make any corrections or updates before moving on to the next phase.
Development Phase
The development phase is where you will be putting together all of your designs, copy, and wireframes into a website that has everything needed in order to function online. This means you are adding it behind the scenes code so that your website can be published and launched.
While you would usually never show your stakeholders all of the code, it is essential to make sure that you and they feel comfortable with what has been placed behind the scenes. You want to make sure that any copy or content has been carefully reviewed and edited down to the last detail. It is essential for anyone writing copy to be a native speaker or fluent in the language that will appear on your website.
Websites should also follow SEO best practices where they are correctly coded to rank well with search engines like Google. This is especially important for business websites which need to rank well when people search for specific keywords related to their product or service. You want to make sure that you are using high-quality content and giving search engines a reason to rank your site at the top of the list.
Testing Phase
Once you have developed all of your designs, copy, and wireframes into working code, it is time to test them thoroughly for any errors or problems with functionality before launching them live online.
Testing can include:
- Make sure that the site works on all browsers and on both desktops and mobile devices
- Testing out links to make sure they work correctly (they should lead to other pages inside of your site)
- Verifying that you’ve used high-quality images (should be free from watermarks or any other type of royalty) and that they look good on all devices
- Testing out any CSS and HTML to make sure you didn’t miss anything important
Once your site has been tested and everything is working correctly, it’s time to publish the website online. Publishing takes just a few minutes in most cases but sometimes can take up to 24 hours for large websites with lots of traffic.
Post-Launch Review Phase
Once your website is live online, you should have a plan to track how it’s performing compared to your goals. You can then review the data that you collect and use this information to improve the site for future visitors. This is where marketing efforts are essential in order to get more people on board with your website.
Once you have determined that your website is ready to be published, it is important that you submit it for any necessary indexing with search engines like Google or Bing. This helps search engines find your site more quickly so they can start sending new visitors your way. After all of the hard work involved with creating a good website, this is the final step to get it ready for the public.
Final Thoughts
The site you create is not going to be irrelevant for years. You will continually be making updates and upgrades every year, whatever the size of the business is. Building a website requires a lot of creativity, design, marketing, and most importantly, industry expertise. Some companies have a web team in-house that knows everything about the website, while others hire outside professional help.
Regardless of who does it, a business needs to continuously monitor its site to plan for future enhancements and upgrades. The website design process typically begins with a small amount of planning and research before moving on to more detailed steps where you constantly gather feedback from the client.
There are many more steps involved between each of these main phases, but you get the idea. The length of time it takes depends on the size and complexity of your site. Websites can take days to build for small businesses, while larger sites with complex features might take weeks or months to complete.
The good news is that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can become an effective web designer. You don’t need to have years of experience or a degree in something related to design or technology. If you know which areas of the website to focus on, you can improve it in a relatively short period of time without becoming a pro at HTML or CSS.
