It is important that you define well the Website Development Process, so that each thing can be done in its time and that nothing is forgotten, in addition you will have a parameter of the development time of the project, so you can deliver it on time established.
At the end you and your client will be satisfied with the result.
BRIEFING
Briefing is the first phase of site planning!
Definition of Briefing according to Google:
It is a concise and objective set of information and instructions about the mission or task to be performed.
The Briefing can be a document or a form containing questions such as:
- What are the main goals of the site?
- What messages should the site pass to visitors?
- Is there a date for the site to be launched?
- …
These questions, in addition to other questions, are designed to help you succeed in developing your site.
We can divide these questions into the following topics:
- Know the Company and its business
Know what the company does its environment. And if the focus of the site to publicize or sell product, knowing how it works or product or system is indispensable. - Site Goals
Establish two to three goals that the site should achieve. This way you can focus your efforts in a way that impacts the site visitors. Often times, the client will not even know how to set the goals that the site should achieve, at which point you should enter your sense of observation and research to help the company move forward. - Target Audience
Knowing the target audience of the company is important because it will help you to define the language that should be used on the site, what type of content to produce, what media channels to use, and when and how to offer promotions or possible changes and improvements on the product. - Competitors
Find out who your competitors are! how they sell and launch their products, used visual identity, messaging, and social networking.
With the Briefing in hand you should organize the tasks and deadlines using some project management tool. It can be from a spreadsheet to a task manager such as Runrun.it or trello.
WIREFRAMES AND ARCHITECTURE
The sitemap is part of the information architecture of the site, through which we can define what pages the site will have, and the connection between them. Basically you will be creating all the navigation of the site.
With all the planning set it’s time to get your hands on the dough. You will create the wireframes of the pages. Wireframe is a prototype, it’s a basic drawing that shows the architecture of how the final page will be, a sketch of your pages that helps you define the hierarchy of content.
Wireframes look like this, if hand drawn:
Or you can use tools like:
MockFlow
Moqups
LAYOUT
Once you have made a basic sketch of your website the next step is the layout design. At this stage you should have the company logo in hand, as well as materials that refer to the company’s visual identity. To draw the layout you can use Illustrator and to edit images, Photoshop, both are from Adobe.
DEVELOPMENT
The next step, after the client has approved the site layout, you should start developing the site. This process is a bit more time-consuming as it goes into encoding and integration with your CMS, for example: WordPress, which is a popular and free CMS.
TEST
With the site ready it’s time for you to test it, you should test it in many ways, from the acceptance of layout to its usability, usability. Try to test the site with lay people on the subject matter of the site, and with people who know what it is. You should also test if your site is functional.
You can use a checklist, for this I recommend the site: https://frontendchecklist.io/
This checklist deals with several topics such as: HTML, Webfonts, CSS, Javascript, accessibility, performance, SEO, etc … Worth checking out.
You can also test your site on the new google tool: https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en
LAUNCH
And the big day of website launch arrives! At this stage you already have a purchased domain and a hosting that supports all the requirements of your site.
It is worth remembering that before making the final release it is a good idea to put the website in a temporary link for the final review. And after reviewing put the website in the final link.
CONCLUSION
It is important that throughout the development process of the site the client knows in which step is his project. You can inform it by email. It is not appropriate to leave the client without any news about the progress of the project for a long time.
All stages of site development must be carefully worked out, so you avoid future problems and you will also have confidence that everything works as it should.
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