7 Steps of Website Development Process
- It has never been simple and easy to connect with this vast, global community of website development, but it has also never been more challenging to earn business benefits from it. Custom websites that are professionally created are true to your label, easier to rank on search engines, extremely effective for advertising campaigns, expandable, secure, and, ultimately, a wise incentive to invest with long-term benefits.
- Let’s take a look at what the website development process looks like. Professionally developed custom websites are valid to your label, easier to rank on search engines, and extremely productive for marketing campaigns.
- Here are the seven essential steps in web development:
Information Gathering
- At this stage, the most important objective is to develop a full understanding of your prospective website’s purposes, the primary goals you want to achieve, and the target audience you want to entice to your site. A well-thought and comprehensive plan relying on the pre-development data can keep you from spending additional resources on unforeseen problems like redesigns or technical services that weren’t previously intended.
- We recommend that all decision makers review through these goals in writing, emphasizing that any subsequent developments to the goals may affect the project extent, timeline, and budget.
- The estimated time of this stage is about 1 to 2 weeks.
Website Planning
- At this stage, the developer creates data that enables a client to evaluate how the entire website will look. The sitemap is generated using the information collected in the previous phase. Defining a sitemap is always a step toward the beginning of our website development process when we work with our clients on their new website. A sitemap helps to improve the site’s user experience and will guide the formation of content on each page.
- Considering your project objectives, how will you evaluate the results of your new website? List the technical, user behavior, and marketing KPIs based on your specific goals – for example, loading speeds, conversion rates, and organic traffic. Also, characterize the CMS attributes that will improve the usability and efficiency of your website experience.
- The estimated time range is 2 to 6 weeks.
Design
- We are already two steps into your website development process without even mentioning design or development. Design and development should support your project objectives and web content, not the other way around.
- In terms of design, all visual content, such as images, photos, and videos, is formed at this stage. Once again, all of the information assembled during the first stage is critical. While creating a design, keep the target audience at top of mind.
- When it comes to design, the first action would be that either the procedure should be mobile-first or regular responsive. The layout for the site is the work of a designer. The layout’s primary purpose is to represent the information structure, illustrate the content, and showcase basic functions.
- The estimated time of this stage is from 4 to 12 weeks.
Content Writing and Assembly
- You can begin creating your landing page and other relevant content while gearing up for the development phase of the website development. At this stage, you must write down the core of what you want to communicate to your website’s audience and include calls-to-action.
- Content writing also entails creating catchy headlines, text formatting, writing new text, arranging existing text, and other tasks.
- The estimated time of the content writing stage is from 5 to 15 weeks.
Coding
- This phase begins with a tech requirement specification, in which teams of professionals define the technologies, features, integrations, and other considerations that will help our backend and frontend development.
- Typically, the home page is designed first, followed by all sub-pages, in accordance with the web hierarchy, which was previously created in the form of a sitemap. Frameworks and CMS should be used to ensure that the server can manage the installation and setup without issue.
- When your official site is subject to review, you will be able to test it in a constrained staging website environment during the monitoring and review before launching it.
- The estimated time it takes for coding is from 6 to 15 weeks.
Testing, Review and Launch
- Usually, the process includes all aspects of the website experience, such as speed testing, ability to respond and other design features, performance characteristics and integrations, and security.
- The links made are to be tested to ensure that none of them are broken. You should check every structure, script, and run spell-checking software to look for possible typing errors. Use code verifiers to ensure that your code adheres to current web benchmarks.
- It’s time to upload your website to a server after you’ve double-checked it. File Transfer Protocol software is commonly used for uploading. After you’ve implemented the files, you should run one more final test to ensure that all of your files were properly installed.
- The estimated time for testing and launching the website is from 2 to 4 weeks
Maintenance
- It’s important to keep in mind that a website is a service rather than a product.
- Website maintenance is a continuous process because they delegate security monitoring and backups, as well as other technical maintenance tasks like speed optimization, integrations, bug fixes, and more.
Wrapping Up
- Remember that the website development project does not begin with coding and does not end when your website is finally launched. Also, that there is no such thing as an insignificant website development phase will save you from surprises and give you confidence that everything is running smoothly and that you have complete control over the project.
