Our Process for Award-Winning Websites:
A thoughtfully designed and developed website can greatly impact the success of a business. It acts as an online representation of the brand and can create a positive first impression for potential customers. In this post, we share 8 crucial steps in the website development process that makes our websites award-winning websites.
A website that is easy to navigate, visually appealing and provides valuable information can establish trust and credibility. It can also increase the likelihood of visitors becoming customers. A website is a powerful marketing tool, allowing businesses to reach a wider audience and expand their customer base. Overall, a well-designed and developed website can play a significant role in driving business growth and success.
That is why we have developed a thorough process to create websites that converts well, engages the audience, and generates leads.
1. Information Gathering:
Information gathering is the first and the most important step in the website development process. In this step, our team works closely with the client to define the project scope and goals. We collect all necessary information from the RFP and the initial brand audit or existing creative briefs.
We then assign team members to the project and set clear expectations and milestones for each phase of the project.
Our team will collect all necessary information and existing assets including logos, images, content, and other archival materials that will be utilized in the new website.
2. Research and Analysis of target audience and competitors
In step 2, our team starts the discovery process by doing a deep dive into the analytics from the existing website and the brand’s social media channels. We also perform market research to identify and narrow down the target audience, identifying the existing website’s strengths and weaknesses. The finished products are detailed SWOT analysis and User Persona that give our design team directions for the next step.
3. Information architecture and wireframing
Information architecture is a crucial step in the web design process, as it sets the foundation for the overall user experience and helps determine the success of a website. In this step, we organize and structure the website’s content in a clear, intuitive, and user-friendly manner. The goal of the information architecture is to make it easy for website visitors to find the information they need. We ensure that the content is logically organized and easy to understand. Our team creates a sitemap to determine the optimal navigation and the user journey through the website.
We then start the wireframing of the new website. Wireframes are simple, low-fidelity sketches that outline the basic elements of each page, such as the placement of text, images, buttons, and other user interface components. The main purpose of wireframe is to help designers and developers visualize and plan the structure, layout and functionality of a website before actually building it. It is also the best way to get an initial approval from the client on the overall design and the flow of the website early on in the process.
4. Design and prototyping
Concurrently with step 3, our team identifies the brand identity by designing the style guide which is a visual representation of the brand, including the logo, color palette, typography and other elements that reflect the brand’s personality, tone of voice and values.
In step 4, we also move to prototyping or full mock ups. Prototyping involves creating a working model of the website to test and refine the design and user experience. This step is also called UX/UI which stands for User Experience/ User Interface. The end result is usually a medium to high-fidelity interactive mock-up that closely resembles the final website. The purpose of prototyping is to test and validate the design concepts, ensure responsiveness on all devices, identify any usability and accessibility issues and make necessary changes before the actual development of the website begins.
We then seek approval from the client on the high-fidelity mock-up before moving to the next step which is development and coding.
5. Development, integration and implementation
Our website developers go to work and start writing the code that makes the website functional, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other programming languages as needed.
This step is done on our development servers and it involves the integration of a Content Management System (CMS). This allows the client or website owner to easily manage and update the website’s content as well as all necessary plugins. Our developers then implement all necessary functionalities such as forms, search functionality, calendars, e-commerce features and other elements that are critical to the website’s user experience.
6. Testing and quality assurance
Once the coding is complete, a thorough testing of the website is performed to identify and fix any bugs or errors, and to ensure that the website is functioning correctly and meeting the project’s goals and requirements.
In this step, our developers apply the necessary adaptations and automations in order to achieve the ultimate project goals. We test for responsiveness to make sure the website is fully functional on all devices, browsers and screen sizes. We also optimize the website’s performance by implementing image optimization and other techniques to ensure that the website loads quickly and smoothly.
7. Deployment
Once the website is fully tested and debugged, our developers start transferring files to the client’s server. We also perform necessary server setups and configurations in order to set up the domain name on the client’s hosting.
At this stage, the existing and the new website will be backed up so we can access the files at a later time if needed. We schedule regular backups so if any issues rise in future, our team can retrieve and load the site from a previous backup copy.
We then implement security measures such as SSL certificates and other steps to protect the website and user data. A basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is implemented to make sure the website is visible by search engines and easily findable.
Once the website goes live, we perform another thorough round of testing on the live website. Our team will ensure that all functions and features are working correctly and that the website is optimized for performance. We perform a speed check to make sure the site has optimal load time. All websites we create are equipped with analytics that collect, measure and analyze several metrics about visitors. These analytics are valuable in providing insight into your business. They can be used to better understand how visitors interact with the website, how much time they spend on each page, what they are looking for and so much more.
8. Maintenance and ongoing improvements
Every website requires on-going monitoring to ensure it is running smoothly. We need to fix any bugs or issues that arise, and update the plugins as needed.
Our team often discusses a maintenance plan that is suitable for our clients. We can either offer video tutorials if our clients choose to maintain the website on their own. Or we can create an ongoing maintenance plan where our team will regularly check and resolve any issues and update the website as needed to ensure smooth functionality of the website.
Thank you for taking the time to read our latest blog post on website development process. We hope that you found it informative and helpful.
At Creative Repute, we are dedicated to creating stunning, award-winning and highly engaging websites. If you are looking to take your online presence to the next level, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team of experts is ready to bring your vision to life. Let’s start your next web design project today!
