If there’s one term that is often misunderstood it’s this one: web development. It’s so much more than the fancy images and attention-grabbing colors on each website page. Web development is the detailed planning and building process that determines how your website looks, acts and works.
Building a great website means following a consistent process. Coupled with website design, our development process ensures your website helps you reach your goals.
The 5 Steps We Use to Design & Develop Your Website
Developing and designing the website of your dreams is a team effort. During the process, we’ll handle most of the deliverables but, you’ll be responsible for some of your own. To help you better understand the web development process, we’ve broken it down into five easy to grasp steps.
1. Lay the Groundwork
First things first, we want to get to know your business better. By laying the right groundwork, we’ll be able to make strategic decisions to jumpstart your project. During this time, we’ll discuss:
- Website Goals: We’ll determine the primary goal or action you want for users to visit your website. Is it to fill out a form, call your office, or purchase something?
- Your customers: We’ll want to develop a website that communicates your message to those who matter the most: your customers.
- Your brand and design preferences: If you have a logo, we’ll take a look for design inspiration. We’ll also discuss website designs you like and those you don’t.
- Your content: Yes, this step comes first. After all, building a great website depends on communicating your message. Whether you’re writing your own content or receiving help from a professional copywriter, we’ll complete this step before moving on.
2. Create a Project Timeline
A project timeline ensures everyone on the team stays on track to launch your website as quickly as possible. Our project manager will prepare a schedule for deliverables for our team and yours. This is a great time to ask any questions you have about your deliverables or the overall project.
3. Design Your Website
It’s go time! Before we get started on the development stage of your website, you’ll need to approve the design. We’ll create a style guide complete with colors and fonts for you to review and for our designers to reference during the development process. We’ll also create a navigation outline of the top-level and sub-pages your website will have.
Finally, we’ll create a mockup to give you a visual of the home page of your website. You’ll see the design and layout, serving as the template for the other pages on the website. If there’s anything you wish to change, you’ll deliver that feedback to us.
4. Develop Your Website
With your stamp of approval, development begins, starting with your home page. You’ll be able to view your developed home page in your browser for approval. Once approved, we’ll deliver one or two interior pages so you can see how all the pages work together. Finally, we’ll develop your full website and send it to you for the final review.
5. Go Live
It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: website launch! But wait, it’s not as simple as flipping a switch, there are lots of pieces to put into place to fully introduce your new website to the world. The first step is to update DNS hosting, which tells the internet where to find your new website. Next we need to install an SSL certificate to secure communication between users and the web server. As a final step, we’ll install and activate Google Analytics so you can track your website’s traffic.
Bonus Step: Maintenance & Ongoing Website Updates
Congratulations! Your website is now live and ready to help you reach your business goals. Over the course of the next few months and years, your business will likely change. We can help maintain and perform website updates to keep content up to date, add new service pages, add features and more.
Learn More About Our Design & Development Process
Ready to get started on your website project? To learn more about our design and development process, send us a message.
