Website Development Phases
The web development phases will give you an idea about each of the steps involved when designing a website.
1. Research
2. Creative Concept
3. Website Architecture
4. Design
5. Development
6. Launch
1. Research
This phase largely involves research about competition, similar websites, target audience, website purpose and strategy, keywords competition, users’ needs and goals, and so on.
2. Creative Concept
This is where the project goals and requirements should be given a creative idea.
3. Website Architecture
Website Architecture and Design actually occur at the same time, as these steps will greatly affect each other. For instance, we need to have a good idea about the information architecture of the site (which is done in the design phase) before we start developing the content and interface. And, as the content is developed, it will impact the interface, adding or taking away pages or even restructure entire website.
4. Design
Design begins with the development of the site’s information architecture. Remember that it’s very easy to make changes here that would be very time-consuming to do later on in the project. Once we have the website interface worked out, the actual visual design is done and approved. It’s really important to get the design approved before starting the next phase, Development. It’s much easier to rework design elements in Photoshop than in HTML, so it really saves time to make sure that the development phase is just building out the site.
5. Development
This phase involves building the site templates, integrating them with a CMS and then creating the pages themselves. We like to review the site template before the majority of the pages are built out to make sure that the template coding is good enough. Some design tweaks are made during this phase. However, if these tweaks could cause delays, we let the client know. More usability testing at this stage is a good idea, just to make sure that nothing was missed.
6. Launch
Make sure that every page has the right information and all the links are working BEFORE going live. Check for semantic mark up on every page. An unclosed tag, list or paragraph can cause big headaches. Once the site is launched, do a complete link check and also check that any applications are working fine. Once the website is live, set up a maintenance plan with the client. It’s really important to let the client know how everything is going. For example, if you cut back on research or cut back on usability testing to meet a certain deadline or budget, let the client know this in writing because the excitement of having the website live may turn against you later on, when problems occur.
