You, as a customer, should know the main steps of the website development process because it is about time and money, which are the cornerstones of any business.
For example, many think that website building involves drawing design and HTML/CSS/JS coding, but the core parts of the process stay behind the scenes. These vital stages of the website development process directly affect the website marketing efficiency, conversion rate, and business profit.
Now, let's get down to the typical website development process.
The website development process
It is challenging for a web design agency to build a technically superior, marketing-efficient website for a business that will be optimized for search engines and conversions without a documented website development process. That is why web design firms follow the typical website development process adapted to the specific features of the project or an agency. As a customer, you can ask the representative of the web design company about the process they follow. This will make it clear what you are paying money for and what you will get eventually.
The website development process contains these steps:
Website goals
First, a customer and a web design agency should define website goals. Are outdated design or competitor’s web presence reasons to invest in a website? The answer is no. are not. Such reasons can’t be the website's goals.
A website is a business tool. Hence it should be designed to achieve business goals.
Common goals of business websites:
Driving sales for e-commerce sites and leads for corporate sites
Building interest in the product or service for startups
Increasing customers loyalty for enterprise companies
Driving subscribers for blogs and news sites.
Aiming for these business goals requires defining other website design goals, for example:
Add custom back-end functionality to record user purchases
Use a new UI design style
Conversion rate optimization
Improve UX design for search engine optimization.
Why defining website goals is so important? The goals directly affect the scope of the web project tasks, timeline, and budget. Also, keep in mind that changing website goals leads to budget and project timeline changes.
The estimated time of this stage: it takes a few hours, and the timeline depends on communications.
Planning
This stage stays behind the scene, but it affects the efficiency of the future website. The web project team should gather information about the following:
Choosing the preferred Content Management System (CMS)
Target audience research
Marketing research (business niche, competitors, etc.)
UX research.
Gathering information allows defining project requirements to plan a website:
Technical and integration requirements (extensions that we need to use or code custom solutions)
Marketing requirements and KPIs
Sales funnel
Content Architecture.
When the project team gathers information and defines requirements, F5 Studio’s project manager delivers the project roadmap, project plan, sitemap, and rough prototypes of the main website pages to a customer.
The estimated time of this stage: is 30-80 hours, and the timeline depends on the project's complexity.
Website design
During this stage, web designers create layouts of website pages. The quality of a web design and the number of iterations depend on information and requirements gathered in the previous stage. Keep in mind a website design has to be in service of your business goals, not the other way around.
F5 Studio web designers usually start with the home page layout. A project manager sends the layouts for the customer’s review and approval. F5 Studio’s web designers work on designs until the customer is satisfied with the result.
Which things are hidden from you? Usability and UI testing stay behind the scene. A customer sees the end result. That is why smooth communication is vital at this stage. F5 Studio’s web designers have lots of experience in using different web design styles for business sites, even unusual or original, like Neumorphism or Dark mode. You can also check out the F5 Studio’s portfolio.
Our team or the customer's team should create content and media files like images, photos, and videos at this stage.
As a customer approves the layouts of the website's main pages, website developers can start coding.
The estimated time of this stage: is 40-200 hours, and the timeline depends on the number of main pages, UI design style, and other factors.
Website development (coding)
As you may remember, we created technical and integration requirements at the Planning stage. The tech specification guides front-end and back-end development.
Usually, customers like this step of the website development process because they can clearly see the results in near real-time.
F5 Studio’s web developers use our own server and a version control system (Git) to track code changes. This approach provides project security and code quality and simplifies code management, which also saves time and money.
At this stage, F5 Studio’s web developers configure basic SEO and write user (website admin) guides in addition to coding, integrating third-party systems, and creating custom solutions.
As web developers finish their work, a website is ready for review and testing in a restricted staging website environment.
The estimated time of this stage: is 60 to 240 hours, and the timeline depends on the stack of technologies and web developers' skills. Experienced and skilled web developers can code a website quickly enough, but their hourly rates are usually higher than those of less qualified web specialists.
Website testing (Quality Assurance)
Professional web design firms have a staff of skilled QA engineers to run website tests.
F5 Studio’s website testers manually check every URL of the customer’s site, test website speed, review every page, and use all buttons, forms, and integrations. Also, website security should be tested. F5 Studio’s QA specialists always use QA checklists that prevent errors related to the human factor.
Usually, web design firms use their own testing process. You can learn more about Quality Assurance in website development.
The estimated time of this stage: is 20 to 60 hours, and the timeline depends on the size of QA checklists and website complexity.
Website launch
Once you review and approve a website, web developers make the website accessible online. It means your website is accessible to users and search engine bots.
The launch of a website can be a challenging task despite many thinking it is easy.
Web developers should correctly deploy the website files to a server, set up email software, and configure integrations and other settings.
After the launch, the F5 Studio team provides final testing to fix bugs and check the configuration of third-party integrations. Also, we provide training to prepare a customer or website admin for content editing, updating, and set-up functionality. A customer gets all user guides and access to the website admin panel.
Additionally, web developers can set up web tracking tools, add a website to Google Search Console, and configure web analytics tools.
At F5 Studio, we provide 30 days of website maintenance for free. A web developer can find and fix all hidden bugs during this time. If customers will to continue website maintenance, they can conclude a contract.
Anyway, a professional web agency like F5 Studio and many others do not leave their customers without support.
The estimated time of this stage: is a few hours.
Conclusions
The website development process is vital for web design agencies and their customers because it makes cooperation straightforward and allows for building efficient websites that achieve business goals. This process is not a dogma and should be adapted to the project's needs. For example, the online store development process can be slightly different from a law firm's website development process.
If you rely on a professional web design company, you can count on its staff's more attentive attitude and the process adapted to your business.
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