Website Development Process Explained

1. Request for Proposal

Say, you have found a vendor. What to do next? We recommend you to prepare RFP containing the following information:

• The project’s brief outline
• Specify your target auditory, including their demographics, your brand perceptions, etc
• The nearest competitors. Browse through their websites and create a list of elements or features you would want to “borrow” from them
• Your business goals. What do you want to achieve with your website?
• Your message. That is what will motivate and attract your customers to purchase from you.
• Any additional data such as branding issues, preferred design style, technologies, etc

2. The Scope of Work

This step is crucial as it determines how much time you will need to wait to get your job done and, hence, how much money you need to have your project completed. Prepare a well-defined plan outlining specific features, deliverables, timelines, and activities along with GANTT diagram (for complex websites). When finished, your vendor will do a preliminary estimate, and you both are ready to go.

3. Prototyping

This stage is optional and sometimes customers decide to skip it. However, it is very important in any website development process as it allows to save time and money fixing all potential issues. That is why we strongly recommend not to skip it in any case, even if your budget is limited. At this stage, your web development company prepares the rough draft of your future site by creating a sitemap and wireframes. This will not demonstrate the actual look of your site, but this can show the website’s structure as a whole, making it easy for developers to launch it successfully from the first shot.

4.Visuals

Once the blueprint is ready, it is now time to build visuals. Typically, the designers prepare the homepage first, and then proceed to other pages. At this stage, your site gets its feel/look as its grid, page, and graphic designs are built and approved. Traditionally, the designers create both web and mobile versions to make your website easily accessible through different devices. The database development is also provided, if necessary.

5. Backend

The website’s backend development is performed using the following technologies:

• Frameworks:

YII, Symfony, Zend, Laravel

• CMS:

OctoberCMS, WordPress, or other

• Ecommerce:

Magento, OpenCart, WooCommerce

6. Frontend

After all the designs being approved, it is time to develop graphic and visual content, illustrations, slideshows, photography, and podcasts. At this stage, the coders create HTML and CSS of your future site.

7. Testing

When the site is finally ready, there will inevitably be performance and design issues that should be fixed before it goes live. That is why the site will be placed on a specialized server to check if any break occurs.

8. Launching

After you approve the whole project, it will be uploaded to your server. But once you launch it, be ready to make some minor changes to it such as to fix broken links, edit content, and make adjustments.

9. Maintenance

A website is living creature that needs constant care and maintenance. So monitoring the analytics, updating content, and making changes to the backend are integral parts of the normal routine. These operations are necessary for the normal functioning of your website. As you can see, the web development process requires many steps that are impossible to avoid. Please remember that it does not begin with web designing, and does not end after website launching. This is a neverending process! But if you created an effective communication with your web development agency, it will save you from many unexpected problems in the future. In this case, you can rest assured that you will get a perfect website that meets all your requirements and helps your company grow.