Website Design Process - Online Business Articles

Deciding to have a website is a big decision and along with that big decision there is a process to go through before the site or blog is up and running.

There is a defined life cycle of a website. The web design process encompasses that life cycle. We walk you through the web design process step by step.

Website Planning & Analysis

Planning your website or blog is a very important step yet, like a business plan, many come to us without a plan. Taking the time to plan what ROI (return on investment) you want from the project is the first step to a successful project. As you work through the planning of your website you can analyze where to spend money on the website and where you will need to spend money and/or time promoting the site after it is done.

From the planning stage there is tonnes of information gathered that will be useful throughout the web design process:

• Purpose of Website

  What is the purpose of building the website or blog? What is it that your want to accomplish?

• Target Audience

  Who is your target audience? What do they expect to see when they arrive at the site? Where do they go on the Internet?

• Website Technical Requirements

  Once you have your list of features your target audience would want to see, what website technology is required to provide these features? A database? Some special scripting language?

• Website Hosting Costs

  With your list of website technical requirements in hand you can do some shopping as to what type of web hosting you require and what the cost of that web hosting will be.

• Website Budget

  What budget to you have right now to build and host the website? Are there some features that will have to wait to a later date to be implemented?

We have some articles which will be helpful in your website planning and analysis stage:

• Website Planning – A Step by Step Guide is a more detailed article covering the points above.
• Starting an Online Business explains some steps when starting an online business.
• Choosing a business domain name for your website will be the marker of your online presence. Make it special!
• Securing quality web hosting covers what to look for in a web hosting company, with your web hosting checklist in hand and your list of website technology requirements in hand this should be easy! Free Web Hosting VS Paid Web Hosting gives some pointers on why you should choose to use paid web hosting.

Web Design Stage

We will take your wish list from your website planning stage and come up with a website design that targets your audience.

First is the mockup of the overall template (the typical page elements) for your approval. Next is the mock up of typical pages on the site. e.g. A category page suitable for an ecommerce site or a section of services you provide. An individual page suitable for an individual product, service or general information page. If there are other typical pages required for the site, you will see a mock of them also for your approval.

The web design stage also includes working out any usability and accessibility issues that arise.

As the web design is developed, the necessary artwork is either made by us or provided by you and edited to suit it’s location on the website. With the full website package, the web page content you provided is also included into the web pages.

Once the mock ups are approved, actual working copies of the pages will be developed and shown to you in our testing area.

Those who choose our DIY template package would then proceed to take the templates provided and add your web page content.

On completion of the pages required and your final approval, it’s time to implement the installation of your site on your web hosting.

Implementation

With the web design complete, the site can either be uploaded to your web hosting account by us or you can do it yourself.

If you choose to have Accrete Web Solutions implement the installation of your website to your web hosting, we will run the pages through a link check to make sure all the links included are working correctly.

Website Promotion

Once the website is up and running it is time to promote the site.

If you have included one of our website promotion packages with your contract we will start the process of website promotion.

Innovation

After the site has been up for a few months and as your budget allows, new features can be discussed to be implemented into your site. Features that were on your wish list but your budget did not allow for earlier could be discussed about the implement ion of. Maybe you have a new idea to draw in customers and/or readers to the site.

The website design process is never ending if you want to be successful. Visitors are going to expect fresh content on the site on their next visit so you can not just build the site and that is it. If you notice in our diagram at the top of this page the life cycle of a website is a continuous circle. After the innovation stage you start with the planning stage again to develop new website ideas, new products or services to provide, new features your target audience now wants and what website promotion avenues you wish to pursue.

About S. Emerson, Accrete Web Solutions :

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