A website gives your business an online presence which has become quite a necessity as more and more companies are competing against each other on the internet. To stay ahead in the competition, you need to have a stunning website for your business. A well-built website will surely help in driving the growth of your business. If your website design is poor, your audience may not be interested in visiting your site.
Your website should be well-organization, navigation friendly and intuitive and this is possible only if you hire a well-experienced web designing company. The 8 steps of web design which we have listed out for you is the best way to build a successful website.
Project Overview
You need to think about the features and things that you would want on your website. You can check similar websites in your niche and see what features they are offering. After studying several websites, you can create a list of your requirements and provide it to the website designer. You need to explain everything about your business along with the kind of products and services that you are offering. You should let the designer who your target audience is. You should also let him know your competitors and then the budget that you have set for building your website.
In case, you feel that you are not good at it, you can approach a designer and seek his assistance. The designer will send you an email with several questions that will help him get an idea as to what kind of website you are planning to build. Once the planning of your website is done, you can get started with the research part.
Research
The website designer will then spend time researching on your business. The designer will approach and he may ask questions in order to serve you better. The designer will discuss things like your business logo, images and artwork that you would like to use on the site.
The designer will spend good time on studying your biggest competitors. They will also review their websites. This stage will help you know some features that can be exclusive to your website and possible advantage over your rivals.
Another aspect of research is studying analytics. It won’t be required for a new website but if you already own a site and wish to revamp it, it would be worthwhile to review the site’s analytics. Through analytics, the designer or the client can easily understand and judge how well the project has been performing.
Plan Your Site
The best way to plan out your website is to make a rough idea of your sitemap. You can simply use a pen and paper to create a draft of your sitemap. This will allow both the designer as well as the client to think of ideas for further planning.
For each page on your site map, you need to think of page descriptions. For instance, if you have planned out an ‘About Us’ page for your site, you need to think what are you going to put in that page. Apart from publishing some text about your business, you need to think of photos and forms that you can add in that page. This way you can plan out for each of the pages of your website.
The designer will then do the wireframing of your site. This step will be all about clarifying layout and checking whether the important components of the page are properly placed or not. So, planning your site is all about creating a sitemap, adding a description to each page and wireframes.
Website Designing
This is the actual step when the designer will make use of tools like PhotoShop, Illustrator or CorelDraw to design your site. The effort you and the designer put in project overview, researching and planning will definitely help both of you to think good and relevant design ideas.
The designer will provide the rough draft of the design of your website along with the suitable artwork for your site. You can then have a look at the draft and ask the designer to make changes if any.
Site Development
This stage involves the tough part i.e. coding. The draft is then turned into HTML and CSS. Once the coding work Is done, you can start modifying for the Content Management System like WordPress or Joomla.
If the client does not plan to update his website often, you don’t need to install CMS for him. CMS is only suitable for those websites that have got plenty of pages and will is going to be updated consistently by the client.
Website Testing
Before the designer launches the website, he will perform some tests to check usability. If the site is going to feature some complex apps, the designer will run some beta tests. One of the important tests to perform is to check for grammatical errors. The designer will check for broken links and smooth navigation across the site.
Your designer will rely upon several testers to check your site’s performance before launch. Usually, testers are not told about the website has been built. This allows the tester to provide an unbiased review of your site.
Launching Your Site
Launching your site is nothing but making your site available live on the internet for your audience. You will have to register a domain and find a web hosting service and upload your site. You can discuss it with your designer to know whether they include these services in their offer or not. Before you go ahead and launch your site, there are several things you need to do such as perform SEO, make use of the targeted and relevant keywords, add meta tags to important pages, add XML for sitemap, activate analytics and so on.
You can research on the web on things you should do before you launch a site and you will find extensive information on it. The launchlist.net is a good site that will let you know whether you are ready to launch your site or not. It’s a web-based app which can be used for free. More features are available on the paid version of the app.
Maintenance
Do not think that your work is complete after the site has been launched. You need to consistently check your website’s performance through analytics and continuously maintain your site for increasing your presence on the web and to reach out to new visitors.
The 8 step website designing process is the perfect way to get started working on a new or existing website. You should always choose a website designing company that communicates well with you to know your requirements. Also, if the company several years of experience in designing websites, you will know that you are dealing with a reliable web designing firm.
