Development Process

Step 1: Gathering Info: Purpose, Main Goals, & Target Audience

The initial phase of exploration and research sets the tone for subsequent actions in any development process, whether it be web application development, software development, or other types of projects. During this stage, the paramount objective is to gain a clear comprehension of your future website's objectives, the primary goals you aim to achieve, and the specific audience you intend to engage with. By compiling all the requisite information, you can facilitate the creation of an optimal strategy for managing the project further. Consequently, this enables you to define the project's extent and delineate critical specifics, including website features, task delegation, project timeline, scope of work, budget, and more.

Step 2. Planning: Sitemap & Wireframe Creation

The sitemap outlines the connections between the key sections of your platform, offering insights into the potential usability of the final product. It reveals the interplay between different pages, allowing you to assess how easily an end-user can access the necessary information or services when starting from the homepage. The primary goal of creating a sitemap is to establish a user-friendly and easily navigable website.

While the sitemap provides a view of the internal structure, it doesn't address the user interface. Sometimes, before diving into coding or design work, it's essential to seek approval from a client to ensure everything aligns with their vision before moving to the next development phase. In such cases, a wireframe or mock-up is crafted.

A wireframe serves as a visual representation of the upcoming user interface design, devoid of design elements like colors and logos. It solely delineates the elements to be included on the page and their placement. It's a simple and cost-effective way to sketch the production process.

Step 3. Design: Page Layouts, Review, & Approval Cycle

During the design phase, your site takes the shape. All the visual content, such as images, photos, and videos, is created at this stage. Once again, all the info that was gathered through the first phase is crucial. The customer and target audience must be kept in mind while you work on a design to make the user interface and user experience intuitive and easy to use. Developing the website layout is the result of a designer's work. It can be a graphic sketch or an actual graphic design.

After the job's done, the customer can review the layout and send you their feedback. If the client is not sure about some aspects of your design, you should change the layout and send it back. This cycle is repeated until the customer is completely satisfied.

Step 4. Content Writing & Assembly

Content writing and compiling usually overlaps with other stages of website creation, and its role can't be underestimated. Now, it is necessary to put in writing the very essence you'd like to communicate to the target audience and add call-to-action. Content writing also involves the creation of catching headlines, proofreading, writing new blocks of text, etc., which takes time and effort. As a rule, the client undertakes to provide website content ready to migrate to the site. It is better when all content is provided before or during coding.

Step 5. Coding

You can finally start creating the site itself. Graphic elements that have been designed during the previous stages are used at this stage to develop an actual website. Usually, the home page is created first, and then all sub-pages are added, according to the hierarchy that was previously compiled in the sitemap. The chosen frameworks and CMS are implemented to make sure that the server can handle the installation and set-up smoothly.

All static web page elements that were designed during the mock-up and layout creation should be implemented and tested. Then, special features and interactivity are added. A deep understanding of every website development technology that you're going to use is crucial at this phase.

When you use CMS for site creation, you can also install CMS plugins at this step if needed. The other important step is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the optimization of website elements (e.g., title, description, keyword) that can help your site achieve higher rankings in the search engines. And, once again, valid code is pretty important for SEO.

Step 6. Testing, Review, & Launch

Testing software or a website is probably the most routine part of a process. Every single link has to be tested to make sure that there are no broken ones among them. Check every form, every script, run a spell-checking software to find possible typos. Use code validators to check if your code follows the current web standards. Valid code is necessary, for example, if cross-browser compatibility is crucial for you.

Step 7. Maintenance: Monitoring & Updating

What's important to remember is that a website is more of a service than a product. It's not enough to just “deliver” it to a user. Make sure that everything works fine, and everybody is satisfied and always be prepared to make changes in another case.

The feedback system added to the site will allow you to detect possible problems the end-users face. The highest priority task, in this case, is to fix the problem as fast as you can.

The other important thing is keeping your site up to date. If you use a CMS, regular updates will prevent you from bugs and decrease security risks. To be sure that there will be less of them, you can opt to the custom software development services provided by outsourcing companies. In this case, you will be sure that a website or software is developed by experts, while your team can deal with other projects.