Web design and development are the two core factors of every website. Both these are a quite complex and delicate process of business. Without these, the website will be of no use. But if done in the right way, the business can grow up to great extent. However, the design acts as the face of the website while development as the brain of the website. Without a face, you cannot make people see how your business looks while without development the website doesn’t work. Both are highly essential as these are the things with which the website works. For the web design and development, one needs to go through a proper process. The reason why this article has been penned down is that not everyone is aware of these processes and suffers great loss while going through these steps. So, this is why we have provided you with the Step-by-Step Guide on Web Design and Development Process because we don’t want to see you people suffering from this thing. Let’s move on now.

Web Design and Development Process Guide

The process of designing and development of the website seems like a tough and real challenge. Very few are able to go exactly in the right direction. With the right light provided, one can see where the road will lead them and what steps we should take in order to reach the desired destination. Likewise, is this case. One must go through different phases in order to build a successful website. These different phases include:

• The Groundwork
• Planning out
• The Designing phase
• The Development Process
• Website Testing and Launch
• Web Management and Maintenance

THE GROUNDWORK

Your website will be the primary presence of your business in the online world. Make sure to work well grounded with your website. In the first step, the following things should be overviewed in the way to design the website:

• Goal Identification

Every website must have a specific goal that they wish to achieve. First of all, identify the goal that you desire to accomplish. Whether your goal is to generate more revenue, increase sales or leads, there must be clarity of what you want to work for. Identify it first then go for the next thing.

• Purpose of the Website

The purpose is basically the reason for achieving a goal. Different persons can have different purposes for their websites. Decide on what will be the purpose of the website that you are going to design. Will it be for the selling purpose, information purpose, entertainment or some other? Just clearly state the purpose why you are creating a website. Remember, there’s always a purpose behind the goal.

• Target Audience

Know which audience you want to target. Are they business persons, students, youngsters, children, professionals or what? Your audience will be vital in specifying your goal and purpose. Knowing who will be your audience and who will buy your services and products is crucial in thriving a business.

• Understanding the Needs

Once you specify your target audience, now it is the time to understand their needs in order to reach out to them. Determine what your target audience needs and what they want. Doing this successfully shows that you really are communicating with them and will create an emotional connection with them. Remember, your relationship with your audience always begin with the emotional connection first. Put your audience needs first and for sure, you will get in return what you want.

PLANNING OUT

Using all the gathered information, now it’s time to plan out the things. This is the step in which you will know how to plan a website design.

• Site mapping

Site mapping is basically the outlining of the website structure. It is a visual process of putting the website content outline in context also called the model a website’s content. Site mapping displays the hierarchal list of web pages with links. So, in the planning phase, you will need to sitemap your website in which you will decide what type of content and features should be included on your site. This will represent the number of pages to be created and their relation with each other. A common example of a website’s sitemap is:

This will help you analyze the inner structure of your website (not the user interface).

• Technical Requirements

Now that you have done with the site mapping, it is time to list out the technical requirements for the website. With the help of the web designers, you will identify the required technical functionalities for your site. Which CMS will be suitable and what programming language will fit in this, all these technical requirements will be listed in this phase.

THE DESIGNING PHASE

Now, here comes the most important phase: The designing phase. This is the phase where you will represent your business. This phase will determine the look and feel of your site. In the website design process flow, there comes three stages: Wireframe, Mock-ups, and Prototype.

• Wireframing

Wireframing is one of the website design process steps. With the gathered information and planning, start to make a wireframe of your site. Wireframing is the process of designing the look of your website screen. It is the drawing of your site’s layout that represents the placement of elements and the content. This is highly important as it will determine which element or content needs to be highlighted and focused according to their importance. There are different tools available on the internet to create wireframes. One of which is Whimsical. With this, you can create lightning-fast wireframes for any screen.

• Mock-Ups

Once you are satisfied with your wireframing, it is now the time for mock-ups. Mock-up is just like a finished product as it is the graphical representation of your website design. It is not functional rather it just represents the functions. It will help you to see how your website will look in actual. Wireframing is just the drawing of the website design while mock-up is the filling of the elements to see the final look. With mock-up, your design is not clickable and interactive, it is just the final representation of the design.

• Prototype

Now that you have created mock-ups for your site, the prototype will be the actual testing of your site’s final design. Here the design will be interactive and clickable. This will help you to test whether the elements are correctly functional or not. This makes modification easy because after coding it would be difficult to modify things.

• The Coding

Now, after done with the final layout, there comes the coding process. You need to code the HTML and CSS for writing web pages. HTML is the code that manages the basic structure which you can also call the bone structure of the site while CSS deals with the style and appearance of the website. Now, here the designing process ends and the development phase starts.

THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

This is the stage where the designed site is ready for the development. In this phase, all the individual graphical elements are put together to create a fully functional site. The elements include:

• Platform Selection

In the platform selection, you need to choose a content management system. During the website planning process, you already had decided the platform for your site but if not you will have to do a thorough research and choose the one that best fits for your site. WordPress being the most dominant CMS and suitable for every kind of website is the one everyone mostly goes with.

• Content and Data

After done with the platform selection, start writing the data and content needed to be included on your site. The information should be unique and essential for the audience. Do not copy anything from anywhere, just make it by your own self and include only the original content.

• Features and Functionalities

As many features and functionalities you want to include, can be added by the process of coding. Here the programmers will work. They will code the entire website to deliver the features and functionalities in the front end. Make sure to accomplish your website with the latest and useful features and functionalities.

• SEO

For the website development, you will also need to do the search engine optimization (SEO). This will help your site to rank above in the search engines making your site appearance better in the field. This is highly essential if you want your site to be easily reached by your audience more.

WEBSITE TESTING AND LAUNCH

After having all the features and functionalities done, you must test your site before launching it. Test the performance of your site across different devices i.e., Desktop, Laptop, Tablet, Mobile etc. Make sure it runs well on all devices but if there’s come some issue then you need to fix it first. As part of the site’s testing, you have to make sure that all the code written for the site is validated. After testing the site by yourself, now conduct a user test and ask if he faces any issue regarding anything. This will help you to fix bugs if needed. After going through all the testing, now it is ready to launch. Go ahead and launch it!

WEB MANAGEMENT AND MAINTENANCE

You can say that the development of your site is not necessarily ended. There’s more to that i.e., Maintenance. Maintaining your site is way quite important. To bring visitors repeatedly to your site, you will have to keep your site fresh and updated. This will demand your time and attention to the site at regular intervals. For its best maintenance, you will have to keep your site up with the latest technology and functionalities. Don’t just take this for granted because maintaining your site well can lead your business up to great level.

How Long Should It Take to Design a Website?

How long should a student take to complete his/her assignment without any deadline given?  Sometimes in minutes, an hour, a day, a week, a month or more exaggeratedly a year. Who knows? This depends on the simplicity or the complexity of the assignment. The easier the assignment will be the shorter it will take to complete. While the more complex it will be, the more time it will take to come to an end. Likewise, the estimated time for designing a website varies and cannot be fixed. It can take a week or weeks even months for designing depending on the simplicity or the complexity of the website. The more features and elements you want to add the longer it will take. However, the average time for designing a website can be from 4-6 weeks. This is just the average as the duration for designing cannot be exactly estimated.

How Much Should I Charge for a Website?

Many people find themselves confused about the price to charge for a website building. An average minimum cost for a small business website in 2020 is $2000 while for medium or large businesses it can start from $6000. To make it easier, take into account the following basic things:

• Know what kind of website you have to build: small business website or for enterprise
• Make a list of your expenses to incur while building a website
• Check out your competitor’s pricing
• Select the suitable pricing model: hourly pricing or project pricing
• Charge reasonably. Don’t offer them a very high or very low cost. Just stay in between.

How Much do Web Designers Make Per Hour?

Hourly rates of a web designer crucially depend on many factors i.e., education, experience, skills etc. According to salary.com, web designers in the United States make an average of $37 per hour.

Parting Thoughts

With the changing time and technology, the web technologies need to be updated too so as to provide deliverables according to the modernity. Websites are largely built to grow business or increase sales and conversions etc. But there might be, in fact, there are some web design mistakes that can kill your conversions. Make yourself aware of these mistakes before you commit any. Because Coding Pixel always wants best for their customers as well as their visitors, this is why we want you to remain cautious of every mistake that can cause your business harm. For any assistance or query, you can contact our web design company at info@codingpixel.com.

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