In the 21st century, it’s no longer enough to have a great in-person facility. The average person spends hours on the internet every day. For many people, that’s likely more time than they spend heading into town.
Because of this, the web design process has become just as important as making sure your business’ design looks right. If you’re putting money into small business marketing, you might as well put money into the best design.
But what does the website design process look like?
This article will walk you through everything a website design firm will look at when it’s designing your site.
First Step — Gather Information
Just like good “real-life” designers, the first thing that a good web design company will do is gather a bit of information.
They’ll conduct an interview with you and find out what you want to accomplish. They’ll help you figure out what your audience needs, as well as what you need, and figure out ways to walk that line. This is largely a process of pairing down some of your goals and putting them under different subheadings so that they can focus on bringing them out through design.
But it’s not all serious-serious business stuff. They’ll also want to know your preferences for color, look, feel, tone, and any special features that you might want. Depending on how much pre-work you’ve done, they may take into account your plan.
Second Step — Plan
After all the proper information is gathered, the planning phase begins. Web design happens online, but that doesn’t mean that resources aren’t required. Your web designer will need to determine what software, third-party media, and in-person work they might need.
For example, if you want a video of you and your workers at the job, this might have to get planned at this phase. (Speaking of which, you should consider this, video has proven to be extremely beneficial in increasing web traffic.)
At this phase, the designers will need to determine the scope of the project as well. Various metrics will get run to determine the scope, and depending on how big of a project it looks like, team members will be dispatched.
The designers will start adding each other to Dropbox, Jumpchart, Mindmeister, or any other file sharing program that they need.
Third Step — Design
In this step, the designers will take all of the information that they conducted/gathered in previous steps, and begin to put it into practice.
The designers will start to get online and make your website become a reality. They’ll most likely be able to get you the main structure of your site, and a visual representation. It won’t be up and fully functional, but you’ll have a better idea of how the finished project is going to look, so you can make any adjustments that you might need.
Two important terms you’ll hear thrown around about this phase are “site map” and “wireframes”. These both refer to visualization — sometimes done on pencil and paper — of the entire website, including what every box might say and what every button might do. You also might see a mock-up go up on photoshop.
Once again, don’t worry that anything is locked into place. Designers understand that a crucial part of this design is your input. The two of you will work together to create the finished project.
Fourth Step — Development
This is the biggest step in the process, and when most of the programming work is done. After everything has been mapped out and determined, what’s left is for the designers to get on your website and start programming/coding it. This is akin to the actual building of a structure, as opposed to the planning/architecture.
This is the part of the process where the actual meat of your site will come to fruition. Each individual page will be designed according to your specifications, and any content that you wanted up on your site will be created.
Various technical parts of the job that designers will have to deal with are getting the basic development engines running, coding templates for each page, and getting the HTML to work.
Fifth Step — Testing
The internet is a fickle thing. It’s important that a site is tested before it’s launched, to make sure that there are no bugs/missteps that the designers didn’t catch.
As well as checking for spelling errors and making sure all pictures successfully uploaded, your designers will essentially put the site through rigorous tests. They’ll click on any and everything, visit the same page multiple times, jump back and forth — essentially try to “break” the site. The site needs to be strong enough to withstand whatever a client might do.
Sixth Step — Launch
When your website is done, it’s not enough to simply throw it online. You have to plan your launch, advertise it to your customers, and make it feel like a big deal.
In this phase, minor adjustments might still get made, but for the most part, everything has locked itself in place. Make sure that you get yourself ready for any customer feedback, and work with your designer to help modify that to their needs.
Post-launch, you’ll still need to stay informed, and a good web designer will stay with you through that part of the process. Make sure you find yourself a good designer who will do this, and hire a web designer from this great site we found.
Understand the Web Design Process
In the 21st century, it’s no longer enough to have a good in-person facility. You have to have a great website as well.
Understand every step of the web design process, so you can better communicate with your web designer. Hire a great web designer, and your site is far more likely to shine.
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