Do you need a website but wondering what are the different processes that a web developer must follow to build your website?
In this blog post, I have shared 5 major processes that are involved in any website development.
Let’s get started.
#1 Concept
The first & foremost step to build a website is defining its concept.
What kind of website do you need? Will it be:
- A simple informative or corporate website?
- An e-commerce website?
- A web portal or marketplace?
- A blog or personal website?
Different kinds of websites require different cost of development and timeframe to complete too.
For example, if you need a simple corporate website you may end up paying somewhere between \$1000 and \$2000 or more. And if you need an e-commerce website, you may need to pay $3000 or more, while for a web portal, a website developer may charge you more than $8000 that totally depends on your requirements.
So, once you have settled on the type of website that you need, you can share your requirements with your website designer so that he or she can lay down the requirements & create a proposal accordingly.
#2 Design
The next step to create a a website is designing.
How your website will look like? What kind of colors your website designer will be using? What kind of structure will be followed?
Usually, a website designer would propose different mockups to you so that you can choose any of them.
You may also feedback on any of those mockups or layouts and your website designer will make necessary changes to it until you are 100% satisfied with it.
During this stage, you need to ensure that the finalised design is as per your expectations because changing the design of a website after its development stage is quite difficult and time-consuming.
#3 Development
After the design stage, comes website development. This is the stage when your website designer, with your consent, decides what kind of CMS or platforms he will choose to build your website.
You may decide to choose among different options like:
- WordPress
- Drupal
- HTML/CSS
- Custom PHP/PHP frameworks
- WooCommerce (in case of e-commerce website development)
- OpenCart (in case of e-commerce websites)
- Magento (for e-commerce websites)
A CMS or any programming language must be chosen considering your existing & future website development requirements.
The timeframe to develop any website depends on its requirements. Some websites may take couple of days to build while other websites may take several months to develop.
Recommended Post: Why CMS (Content Management System) & 2 Best CMS For Your Website Development
#4 Testing
After the website development stage, comes testing phase.
This is the time to test your website from users’ point of view as well as from admin’s point of view.
Some of the major areas to test a website are:
- User-experience: To ensure that all the elements like fonts, buttons etc. are easily accessible and readable for the users.
- Features & functionalities: To ensure that there is no bugs or issues in the website.
- Browser compatibility: To ensure that the website is accessible on all the browsers in the same way as intended.
- Device compatibility: To ensure that the website can be accessed on all the mobiles & tablets.
- Loading speed: To ensure that the website is loading within 4-5 seconds and not taking forever to load.
- Forms validation: To ensure that all the forms on your website are working properly and accepting all the requirement information logically.
#5 Launch
After your website has been developed & tested, now its the time to launch it for the public.
Although, launch is the final step to make any website available online, it’s not a dead-end.
As we know that website development is a continuous process, you do need to upgrade, enhance, improve & maintain your website regularly.