Web Design Process Explained

Every business aims for maximum online visibility especially those who know the benefits their business will get out of having their presence felt on the world wide web. And this is why most businesses know that having a functional and user-friendly website is the best and fast way they can reach out to their customers.

Creating or building a website entails a process of careful planning that enables a web designer to carefully put in place all the elements resulting from such planning. The amount of time devoted on the design process will define the quality, or lack of it, of the resulting website.

• What is the Website for?

This is the first information any web designer should know. Knowing the purpose of the website will help in setting the goals for the site and determine the target audience.

Setting goals for the website will be helpful in evaluating the performance of the site after a certain period. The results of such evaluation will determine if any improvements or enhancements have to be implemented on the website.

Knowing the target audience will help in formulating the design elements of the site. A website intended for children should not contain graphics and text contents which are hard to associate and understand, respectively.

• Start Planning the Design

The best web design starts with a plan and planning should start even before the first wireframe is built.

The design plan should include details about the information architecture – information is classified and described and will be the basis of structure and navigation of the site; planned structure, a sitemap and other technical details like the need for e-commerce, language, etc.

• Design starts after Planning

This is the core of the entire process – the design phase. This is that part where layout designs, wireframes, colors or color schemes, themes and useful and decorative icons and imagery will be put together on the page of the site.

• Work on the Site Content

As every designer will tell you, this is another important part of the web design process. The site’s content will get your site or page found by searchers or users through the search engines. The content will also be the reason for people visiting your site. A web designer should have a full grasp and understanding of the content to be integrated into the website design and layout.

• Build the Site

This is the part where the HTML and CSS will be required. Other technologies like CGI, JavaScript, PHP and databases will also be integrated.

• Test the Site

While building the site, testing should be done to see if all elements are working and functional. The site should run another test after the design has been completed to make sure that the goals and target audience for which the site is intended have been satisfied and achieved, the technical components are working and the pages are navigating smoothly.

• Upload the Site to the Web Host

This is the phase where the website is ready to go live on the net. By uploading all the files or pages to the web host provider, the website will run 24/7 for the users to find through the search engines.

• Maintain the Website

Even after the website is running perfectly on the world wide web, constant updating, addition of new contents and regular housekeeping should be done to make sure users will keep visiting the site.

While some may find the process unnecessarily long and tedious, it pays off in the end because a website design that is well-thought of results to a functional and good quality page for your business.