The Typical Web Design Process
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This article describes the typical web design process from start to finish.
Interview
The web designer usually starts with a thorough interview to learn about your business and goals for your web site. In addition to talking with you directly, some web designers will send you a written questionnaire to fill out as well. Topics include such things as information on: your business, your objectives, your target customers, and your competition. You will be asked to provide examples of web sites that you really like, and why you like them.
It is very important that you are very thorough and fully explain your business and objectives to your web designer. Your web designer needs to completely understand your business, your likes and dislikes, and the ultimate goal you want to achieve with your new web site.
Site Architecture
After the interview process, the web designer will do some additional research about your industry and competitors. The web designer may visit your main competitors’ web sites, and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those sites.
With this information, and the information from the interview, the web designer will come up with the recommended site architecture for your new web site. The site architecture basically lists all the main sections in the site, as well as all the subsections. For example, you may have main sections: Home, Products, Services, About, Contact. Within each of these main sections, you will have several subsections or subcategories.
Developing the site architecture is really a two way process, so you should review the web designer’s recommendations and offer suggestions for improvement. The goal is to create a site architecture that will be comprehensive and flexible enough to grow as your company grows. You want your site architecture to be well thought out to accommodate your needs far into the future.
Graphical Design
The next step is designing the graphical design, or look and feel of your new web site. You should provide your web designer with your company logo, as well as any existing branding that you have. You should give your web designer numerous examples of other web sites that you like, and describe why you like them in detail. If you have any preferences in terms of colors, use of white space, or any other likes or dislikes, be sure to let your web designer know.
Your web designer then goes off and designs the graphical design concepts. Usually they will design the home page first, since that is often the most intricate page. Once the home page is designed, they will create the design of the typical interior page of the site. The web designer normally will email you the design concepts as JPG or PDF attachments. You can then view them directly on your computer.
After the design concepts are presented, you can provide feedback to your web designer, and the designer will revise the concepts until you are satisfied. Once you are happy, you’ll be asked to “sign off” on the graphical design so the web designer can move to the next step. You should not change the graphical design after this point, since changes are costly.
Building The Web Pages
The web designer will then convert the graphical design into the actual web pages. The designer will build the home page, and all the other pages in the web site as well. At this stage, placeholder content is inserted, since the real content is usually not available yet.
The entire web site will then be posted online on a testing server for you to view. You can go to the site and navigate to all the pages. As the web site progresses, you will be able to go to the testing site and see the progress every step of the way.
Programming
More complex programming or database tasks are handled next. The web designer will program all the features that you requested and add them to the testing web site, one by one. Again, you can review and test these features at any time. Once this task is complete, the web site is basically fully functional, and just needs content to be finished.
Content
You should email the content for each page of the web site to your web designer. Your designer will then add the content to each page and post it on the testing server. Alternatively, if you have a Content Management System (CMS), you can add the content yourself without the help of the web designer. Make sure all your text is proofed and spell checked before sending it to your web designer.
Testing
Throughout the entire process, the web designer tests the web site on various web browsers and platforms to ensure maximum compatibility. It is also recommended that you and your staff test the web site as well.
Going Live
Once the web site is ready, your web designer can help you transfer the web site to the live web server. These tasks can be fairly technical, but your web designer should be able to handle everything on your behalf.
Search Engine Submission
After the web site is online, your web designer can submit it to the search engines. It may take from 4-8 weeks for your site to be ranked by the search engines.
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