Websites play a huge part in marketing your business. As a designer and developer, we can build a site that can be maintained and updated. The usual process of building a website is as follows:
1. Sharpening the Axe – Strategy
To effectively design a website you need to understand the business; its challenges, target market and customers. The research phase includes an initial assessment of the current situation, company background, competitors, requirements and goals for the website.
With this research, we come up with a strategy for web design. This strategy will include page flow charts, sub-pages and content strategy for the website. We take a good amount of time planning to make the design and development process as smooth as possible. In hopes to get your brand online presets set up as soon as possible
2. Cutting a Wedge – Design
With the positioning and strategy defined I move on to explore a range of bold and contrasting creative concepts. The focus is on finding relevant, meaningful and creative ways to articulate what you want to say.
We will then start the design process, starting with a simple wireframe. The wireframe then gets developed into a proper design for approval. Depending on the budget and timeframe we can build the website page by page once a basic layout for the pages is accepted. At this stage, all the copy and content should be signed off, as we like to build sites that fit the content.
3. Development – The Chop
This is where the magic happens, the website comes to life. The website is carefully coded, starting with the home page, followed by all other pages, optimized for a responsive layout. All content is integrated; text and image assets are saved for the web and organized for development. Once the full site has been developed, the website is tested and fine-tuned for launch, ready to go live. We work through all the bugs and get rid of all the issues.
4. Launch
The project is launched into the real world and I stay in regular contact to gauge its success post-launch.
All websites need regular maintenance to keep them safe and running smoothly, including updates, upgrades and backups. Building a website is a big investment, and as it will be a significant asset to your business, it’s important to work with the right design team to look after your website.
