The quality of the design of a website is very important to set up a positive first impression in the eyes of website visitors. Whether the site visitors will be impressed by a particular site depends upon a lot upon its graphics, layouts, and visuals.
This makes the web development process very important in terms of crafting a gorgeous-looking fully-functional website as well as improve its online presence. Every stage of the web development project is important, right from the beginning to completion to deliver a perfect web solution at the end.
The steps of web development make it easier for the project manager or business analyst to divide the entire project into manageable phases. Although each phase of the web development phase varies from each other, the most basic steps remain the same.
So, here are the top 5 stages of web design & development process that are important to craft a beautiful-looking website:
Step 1: Project Planning
Planning is one of the most crucial stages of a web development project. It helps in determining the overall goals and objectives of the project. The planning phase has been further categorized into 5 parts:
- Requirement Analysis: This particular phase is related to figuring out the exact requirements for developing the website. This includes determining the website structure, goals, detailed features, target audience, and other related information to the website.
- Project Summary: In this phase, the overall website requirements are documented properly, which serves as a key reference source during the entire web development phase.
- Resource Gathering: In this phase, the software and other resources required for developing the website are defined. The client project-related needs are also clearly documented in this phase. All such requirements are then finally used to determining the overall budget of the project.
- Key Performance Goals – The planning phase also includes determining and setting the KPIs of the project like budgeted costs, page speed, and project deadlines, etc.
- Competitor Analysis – As the name suggests, the key rivals of your business website are determined in this particular phase. Things like the total number of website visitors, bounce rate and other important things (e.g. visual branding, navigation, etc.) related to your competitor’s website are identified in this particular step.
Step 2: Identification of Project Scope
The second phase of the web design process includes determining the scope of the project. Creating a clear and well-defined scope of the project is vital to ensure the timely completion of a web project within the specified budget limit. Project management tools like Gantt chart, etc. can be used to determine the timeframe required for completion of each key project stage. Scoping of the project gets easier with the exact evaluation of the project scope.
Step 3: Website Design
It is one of the most crucial stages as it is related to the entire design of the website. In this particular phase, the web development team focuses on finalizing the color scheme, layout, theme, features and other crucial aspects of the website. Various elements like the brand logo, the color that represents your brand identity are incorporated into the website by the development team to make it look more appealing and elegant. More than one prototypes of the website are created and sent to the project owners for final review by the web development team.
Step 4: Website Development
In this phase, the individual elements of the website are clubbed by the development team to create a fully functional website. This particular stage also includes designing the home page of the website, after a proper navigational structure and the site layout is set. Once the owner to website profits you the relevant content, it is distributed on relevant pages. On the technical front, the development process also includes elements like implementing payment gateways, choosing content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, and designing interactive contact forms, etc.
Step 5: Testing and Deployment
This is the last phase where final touches are provided to the website by the web development team. In this phase, the overall functionality of the website is checked before the final deployment. It is done to make sure everything is running smoothly on the website without any glitch.
The design team runs various scripts and forums to ensure everything on the site is displaying properly from different screen-size devices. Website codes are also validated by the design team as per the latest standards. Once all such things are done, the website is then shown to its owners to obtain final approval of the site.
After getting final approval, it’s time for website deployment on client-server. The site is then uploaded to the hosting server specified by the website owner using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. A final run-through is conducted to make sure the site runs smoothly without any issues after the website has been uploaded to the hosting server.
Finally, to optimize website functionality and performance, things like plugin installation, on-page SEO, and page speed optimization is done by the design team.
Summing Up..!
One must know that the web development process is a time-intensive process and requires dedicated effort and resources. Crafting a gorgeous looking website that stands out from the competition is a difficult task. However, following all the major web development phases properly can ease out the professional website design process and is also effective in terms of saving your effort, cost, and time.
