What the Website Design Process Actually Looks Like in Practice

The perfect website isn’t built overnight. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what the website design process actually looks like.

With the sheer amount of content and design, there is available to consume on the internet the process is a sort of unseen force. The consumer should know that the perfect internet presence is not made in an instant.

The website design process is in-depth and, at times, lengthy. Take a look at what goes on behind the scenes and get an idea of what makes your favourite sites and communities work.

Focus First

As with any project, you need to create an outline before putting the pen to paper or in this case the hand to the keyboard.

Answer these questions and make proper planning before moving forward. The answers to these questions will affect every other step in the process.

What is your intended audience?
What services are you looking to offer with the website
Is it simply informational?
Is it acting as a storefront?
A web-community?
How can the website set itself apart from the competition?
The web community is constantly changing and you want to make sure you are making your mark in the right way while staying relevant at the same time.

Starting the Active Web Design Process

Now with the goals defined and a clear mission statement, the site can begin to show its form. This starts with the foundation and its technological background.

Structure and Planning

This step isn’t a matter of presentation on a visual and format sense but also addressing the coding and technology behind how you build the page structure.

There are very different methods, while certain ones tend to be more popular and efficient, to create and maintain a website. This is where your focus and goal statement comes into play.

A portfolio style site, showcasing the skills and services a freelancer or small business offers will need a much different framework than a heavy traffic e-commerce style site. However, for use with both style sites a CMS or content management system is a strong starting point for any website.

WordPress stands as one of the most popular, with approximately 74.6 million sites depending on its system.

Design and Content Generation

All material intended for consumption is created in this step. The design team is in charge of working on such elements as :

Typography
Colour Schemes
Branding
Static and Dynamic Media
Visual Resources
These include menu items, buttons, and other UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) items.

This step also includes the initial creation of written content and the beginning of search engine optimization. These are both processes that will eventually fall under the realm of maintenance after the site is live.

Development and Testing

It is up to the development team to work in conjunction with the design team to make sure all the pieces on the backend are working properly with all the pieces on the front end.

This connects back to the choices made in the structure in planning, about the coding and various CMS that would be utilized for the website. No one step is disconnected from the rest.

Before going live, there will be a great deal of back and forth as things are tested, between the design and development teams. This is a normal occurrence.

Implementation

Finally! You have curated the content, you have designed the site, and the development team assures you all is air-tight. The only thing left is to push the site live and make the announcement!

You will need to release updates after the site goes live as there will always be maintenance needed. But now you have completed the hard part.

You’re A Website Design Process Expert

You have taken a look behind the scenes and understand the entire website design process. As seamless as the internet comes to us all, you know now how much goes into making these effective communities work.

Now come see what experts of this process, Zephyr Media can do to bring these steps to life for you and your business with design and hosting!