It is necessary to acquaint your clients with your web design process. Illustrating the process to the clients highlights your expertise in the subject matter. The simple demonstration also provides it credibility and ensures positive results to them.
It is easy to find website-building tools in the market that are user-friendly. They are very effortless to use and anyone can build a website using those. However, building a superior website takes more than just a tool. A good web design process requires certain essential steps which are as follows.
Let’s understand these steps in detail.
Planning is the Key
Website designers get down to building their website step-by-step. Having no amount of website-developing skills will do any good if there won’t be any prior planning.
For a professional web designer, start by making a stand-alone page for your portfolio website. Make new clients visit your web design process page. Clients prefer a simple and efficient plan for their website design projects. So, serve them what they want.
Once your idea of the design process for the project is evenly communicated, you end up having a satisfied client. This means the minimum number of headaches as the project advances.
6 Steps of the Web Design Process
How you approach your website design process matters a lot more than you know. To have a quality website involves a gradual approach. Your approach towards building a website showcases your skills and the work put into developing it.
We have outlined a 6-step website design process for you to take a look at. Implement these steps for a superior quality website and happy clients.
STEP 1: Research
Research is all about gathering information. Collecting the right set of information is very crucial. Writing down the gained information already solves the task of how to begin with the project.
To complete any successful project one must know about the goals of the respective project. In order to get to the goals, one must research:
What business do you want to be in and in which industry you want to make your website go live?
The target market of yours and understand the current and future customers.
The ultimate goal you want to achieve with the website.
Being a professional website designer it is very crucial to get to know your client. It is important to know about the industry your client is doing business in. Along with that, the requirements and expectations of the client from said the website.
While it’s very hard not to jump right into building the design, it’s pivotal to learn all that you can about your client’s needs. To do that, the right set of questions must be put forward to the client.
Here are some questions that you can ask your clients before you set off.
What your business is all about?
Which organisations are your competitors?
How is your organisation different from that of your competitors?
Explain your ideal customer.
Describe the notion, requirement and expectation this website is intended to fulfil.
What is the aim of your website?
Who is visiting your website?
What is the ultimate goal of your website?
What is the budget for this project? Is it strict or monetary freedom is there?
Yes, you must ensure yourself of the budget. Also, make your client understand how much a superior website development costs in India.
These questions will give a jump start to your web design process.
Furthermore, these questions are segregated into 7 groups as follows:
Client
Project
Audience
Brand
Features and scope
E-commerce
Time and money
Each group has an important aspect of its own. They hold the capability to bring the information. The information will eventually help shape the overall web design project.
STEP 2: Planning
Planning is as important as researching and gathering information for the website design. Without planning you might not end up with the desirable results.
Think of any task from your personal or professional life. And tell me if you were able to do it better without planning. Considering our day-to-day life, we even plan for the next in advance.
We are obviously tempted to jump right onto the most creative part of the project. But what good is the creative idea if it doesn’t turn out to be what we expected?
Thorough research and planning help you clear your objectives for the project. Investing a fair amount of time in this stage is decisive in the success of the project. Spending time on planning will save both time and money.
While planning you can also build an SEO strategy for the website. If you are not starting from scratch, you can search for the previously missing content. This strategy will help you analyse the potential improvements that can be made.
The planning stage makes it clear for the clients to understand their crucial role in the development. It elaborates on the deadline and timely launch of the website.
Here we have divided the planning stage for you into 3 easy tasks.
Review or build SEO strategy.
Create a sitemap for the website.
Content review and development
Let’s talk about these in detail.
Review or build SEO stratgey
SEO- Search Engine Optimization
SEO is basically improving the quality and increasing the volume of website traffic through organic search engine results.
We all somewhat know about the SEO concept. But what’s often overlooked is that SEO best practices aren’t constant. SEO is an ever-changing set of rules.
STEP 3: Design
Design is actually about how your website will appear. In this, a website wideframe is built. This includes basic web page elements like header, widgets, navigation etc.
You can move the wideframe into a more realistic mockup with the help of Photoshop.
Balancing form and function is the challenge of every good web design. This is where you realise the role of the research and planning phase. Skilled web designers have a good plan set to keep themselves from such challenges.
STEP 4: Development
In this stage, the website design is converted into the actual code which helps the website run. This is the most lengthy stage, therefore, keep the clients in the loop.
For WordPress designers and developers, the fundamental steps of website development are:
Install WordPress on a local host or testing server.
Install a starter WordPress theme.
Install a WordPress backup plugin.
Translate the design to the live site with help of the mockup.
Test and optimize.
You must hire a website developer to receive such good web development services.
STEP 5: Launching the website
Finally, the time to launch the website has come.
There are multiple steps to be taken care of before launching the website. Therefore, create a checklist to be sure of staying on track and not missing anything.
STEP 6: Maintenance
This final step of the web design process must not be overlooked. Maintenance is crucial for the long-term health of the website. Maintenance keeps the online presence of the website, thus, leading to success.
Maintaining a website is just like maintaining a car. Educate the website owners on their long-term responsibilities in order to make the website a success. Not only offer web development services but also web maintenance services to the client.
Kudos to a Premium Website Design
By religiously following these 6 steps you can make your web design process super easy.
Keep yourself in tune with your client for the painless process. And let your client do the talking after achieving the desired results.
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