The web development process isn’t something you should take lightly. While it’s easier than ever to set up a simple site on WordPress, real web development and design take time and effort to complete. That’s why the average time to build a website is between two and four months.
Knowing how to build websites right is critical to getting the job done.
Luckily, there is a standard web development process that most web designers and developers follow. Keep reading to learn all about the website development lifecycle.
Do User Research
Even if you believe you have a great website idea, other people may disagree. If you’re creating a website to get traffic and build a business, you aren’t making it for yourself. You’re building your site for your users.
That’s why the research phase isn’t something you should skip when you build a new website. You need to get feedback on your idea before you spend time and money making things.
Reach out to your user community to get feedback on your website. They’ll tell you if your idea is good and give you feedback that can improve things. Of course, you could also learn that your idea isn’t popular and that you shouldn’t proceed with your website concept.
Create Website Wireframes
Before you start designing your website, it’s critical to figure out how it will work. It’s not always easy to put your idea into words regarding website interactions. If you want to adequately explain things, creating a wireframe will help.
A website wireframe is a visual representation of your website that maps all your pages. You can determine what elements go into each page and how each page interacts with other parts of your site.
Your wireframe shouldn’t just contain the most critical parts of your site, either. You should work to map out every aspect of your site. When you plan everything with this method, you’ll spend less time going back and forth with your developers in the future.
Start Your Web Design
The design phase is the step that follows wireframe development. You don’t want your programmers to create a design themselves. You need a professional that knows what users want and how to give it to them.
You’ll need to consider your users and their needs during this process. You aren’t creating a design that looks good to you. It needs to serve your customers and appeal to their needs on the website.
There are many affordable custom web design services that can help if you don’t want to do the design yourself. Look at your options and their portfolios to see if you can find a designer that can handle the style you want for your new site.
Work With Programmers
Once you finalize your website design, you’re ready to start building your website design. Many designers don’t have much knowledge about web technologies, so you’ll need a programmer specializing in what you need.
At a bare minimum, your programmer will need to know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They can use these technologies to build the front end of your website.
If you have any unique functionality on your site, you’ll need to invest in back-end programming languages. These languages can range from PHP to Node. JS.
It’s possible to find a programmer who specializes in both front-end and back-end programming languages. However, some developers only specialize in one of those. Make sure to consider this in your search for a programmer.
Recruit Website Testers
After you complete your website, the last thing you should do is to launch it to the public immediately. No matter how good of developers you have, there will probably be mistakes on your site.
These mistakes can be because of the programming or design. Because of that, you’ll need more people to look at your site and test it for problems.
Recruit a few testers to your website who are likely to use it normally. Come up with sets of test cases to follow that take people through every normal interaction on your website.
Once your testers complete all your test cases, they can start browsing your website at random to see if they can find issues. On top of that, your testers should be able to provide valuable feedback about current and missing features.
Maintain Your Site
Your job as a website owner isn’t complete when you finish the web development and testing process. As time goes on, your website software will get out of date, and you’ll need to update your content. You’ll need a maintenance plan to keep everything up to date.
Here are a few standard maintenance tasks you can expect to handle during this phase:
- Website backups
- Content updates
- Security monitoring
- Software updates
- Design changes
- Additional website features
Your goal with maintenance isn’t only to keep your website online either. You need to stay updated with changes in your industry and adapt your site to make those changes. If you want to figure out what changes to make, collect as much feedback from your visitors as possible to learn what they need from your website.
The Web Development Process Is Tried and Tested
There may be a few variations of the web development process, but the bulk of the development lifecycle stays the same. The above process will help you start from a website idea and take you through to completion. Keep it in mind if you ever decide to pursue business ownership and create a website of your own.
If you want to learn more about what to do after finishing the website design process, head back to the blog. You’ll learn how to start sending traffic to your new site.
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