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6 PHASES OF THE WEBSITE DESIGN
+ DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Developing a website is about more than graceful and compelling design. It’s about identifying audiences and objectives, showcasing your organization’s uniqueness and making it easy to locate. Our six step process helps us work with you to develop a website that will have a lasting impact.
- Information Gathering + Research
- Planning
- Design
- Development
- Testing + Launch
- Maintenance
Phase One: Information Gathering + Research
The first step in designing a successful website is to gather information and conduct research. This step is actually the most important one, as it involves a solid understanding of the company and its business goals and objectives. Many things need to be taken into consideration when designing the new site in order for it to have the most impact on its intended audiences. Therefore a questionnaire will be distributed to key individuals within the organization to help gather important feedback and information, such as strengths, target audiences and competitors, prior to beginning the planning.
Phase Two: Planning
A site map is developed in this phase using the information gathered from phase one. The site map is a list of all main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics, if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on the site, and is essential to developing a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. At all stages of the design process, the end-users of the website must remain the focus. These are, after all, the people who will be learning about the organization’s service or product. A good user interface is a critical component of an easy to navigate website.
During the planning phase, it will also be decided upon what technologies should be implemented. Elements such as interactive forms, e-commerce, flash, etc., are discussed when planning the website.
Phase Three: Design
Drawing from the information gathered up to this point, the design phase can begin. During the design phase, it is important to keep in mind target audiences and to incorporate any existing branding into the design so that the website coordinates with other marketing materials. This helps to present a consistent message and image to the desired audiences.
Typically, two distinct prototypes of the homepage will be created for a client’s website. These are images of what the homepage design will look like. Once a design direction has been selected, then the interior page prototype will be designed for the client’s review. It is important at this phase that clients exchange ideas and give feedback to achieve a final design for the site.
Once the designs have been approved, the development can begin.
Phase Four: Development
The developmental stage is the point at which the website itself is created. At this stage, the individual graphic elements from the prototype are used to create the actual functional site.
This is done by first developing the homepage, followed by a “shell” for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages of the site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the website. Once the shell has been created, the content can be dropped into the site.
Elements such as interactive contact forms, flash animations or e-commerce shopping carts are implemented and made functional during this phase as well.
During development the website is put up on a test server so that clients can review and test the site – without the public being able to view it – until it is approved to launch.
Phase Five: Testing + Launching
In this phase, the final details are completed and tested, such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, testing for browser compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers) and ensuring that the website is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser versions.
Once final approval has been given, the website is transferred to the client’s server. Once the site is transferred to the client’s server, the site will be put through one last dress rehearsal. This precautionary step is to confirm that all files have been uploaded correctly and that the site continues to be fully functional. In addition, the website will be registered with all search engines and a stat counter is built into the site for clients to track future website activity.
This marks the official launch of the site, and the public will now be able to view the site.
Phase Six: Maintenance
Once the website has been launched, it is important to have visitors returning to the site by keeping the information current and by updating the site with new items and relevant information. The more data on a website and the more frequently it is updated, the higher the odds that the website will rank high in the various search engines.