Six Phases of the Web Site Design and Development Process
Timeline
2017
Information Gathering
The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. Many things need to be taken into consideration when we design the look and feel of your site, so we first ask a lot of questions to help us understand your business and your needs in a web site.
Planning
Here we develop a site map – a list of all main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics (if applicable). This gives us a guide as to what content will be on the site, and is essential to developing a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. This is also the point where we decide what technologies should be implemented – interactive forms, CMS (content management system) such as WordPress, etc.
Design
Drawing from the information gathered up to this point, we determine the look and feel of the site. Target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration here. A site aimed at teenagers, for example, will look much different than one meant for a financial institution. We also incorporate elements such as the company logo or colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site.
Development
This is where the web site itself is created. We take all of the individual graphic elements from the prototype and use them to create the functional web site. We also take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the appropriate areas.
Testing and Delivery
At this point, we attend to the final details and test your web site. We test things such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, we test for last minute compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers), ensuring that the site is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser versions.
Maintenance
The development of your web site is not necessarily over, though. One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to offer new content or products on a regular basis. If this interests you, we will be more than happy to continue working together with you to update the information on your web site. We offer maintenance packages at reduced rates, based on how often you anticipate making changes or additions to your site.
