What the Web Design Process Actually Looks Like in Practice

A web presence is a must if you run a business or want to make a name for yourself. Websites act like a 24/7 salesperson that talks about what you do and why it’s worth buying what you offer.

However, building a great website is easier said than done. And when 59% of people prefer to browse beautiful websites, you can’t take the web design process lightly.

If you want to get the website you’re looking for without wasting time and money, you need to understand the web design process. Read the guide below to learn how the pros handle the web development lifecycle.

Define Your Website Goals

The first step to creating a web design is to figure out what your goals are for your site. You can’t just throw up content and images and hope for the best. You need a set of goals you want to accomplish and create your design based on those goals.

Take a product business, for instance. You want your web design to be centered around highlighting your product’s features.

Yes, there will be more information that doesn’t directly relate to what you sell. But you don’t want that information highlighted and only want people to access it when that’s what they want to read.

Create a Wireframe

You can go through this process much faster by creating a wireframe for your site. Your wireframe will contain all your website elements, navigation, and content. It will help you map every part of your site without going through the design process first.

Start Your Design

You can start adding visual elements to your website once you complete your design. Hand your wireframe documents to your design team and tell them your goals for the project.

Try to keep the needs of your visitors in mind during this process. It’s tempting to focus on what you want and believe looks good. However, your desires may not be in the best interests of the people visiting your site.

Look at other sites in your industry to see if you notice any common trends. You can use those designs as inspiration and learn what people who visit your site will likely want.

Build the Site

You can start the website development process when you finish your website design. You can’t just take your design and automatically convert it to the web. You need to build the design with your website platform.

One common way to do this is with website programmers. Many experts in the IT industry specialize in turning website design documents into code that displays that design. Going this route will help you create unique website features that you wouldn’t get with pre-built website templates.

Depending on the software you use, you can also use page builder software to build your site. This route means you won’t need to invest in a programmer and can use your existing designers from a trustworthy agency to help finish your website.

Invest in Website Testing

Even if you hire great web design professionals, you may not get a perfect website out of the box. Setting up a design correctly takes a lot of work. In most cases, your initial website build will have a few undiscovered bugs.

That’s why website testing is critical to the web development lifecycle. You need to test your website from every angle to find obvious problems.

Of course, don’t limit your search for bugs to one screen size. You need to run tests on various devices and web browsers to test your site properly.

You may not find every issue, but doing this will help you find the most serious ones.

Launch Your Website

You’re ready to take the final step to launch a website once you finish your website testing. Ideally, you won’t have a public web server hosting your site when in development. You’ll do this on local machines or private test web servers.

That means you must launch your website to the public to finish the main parts of the web design process.

Set up your website hosting and point your domain name to your web hosting server. This will let you access your website control panel and file system to upload the finished product.

Upgrade Over Time

Your job as a web admin usually isn’t over after you launch your website. No, you won’t need to spend nearly as much time on making it look great. But you will need to spend time maintaining everything and updating your web content.

Take the web software WordPress, for instance. The chances are good that you use plugins on your website. Those plugins and the core WordPress software will need to be updated over time.

You may also need to update outdated content on your site. If you plan to invest in SEO, you’ll also need to create new content to rank for more keywords.

Now You Know the Web Design Process

Even though you can get a website online quickly with a platform like WordPress, that doesn’t mean you should rush the web design process and cut corners with your design. You need an amazing experience if you want to fulfill your customers’ needs. Pay attention to the latest web design trends and follow the design process to create a web design your business can be proud of.

Do you want to learn more tips that will help you maximize the value of your website and help you drive more website traffic? Check out the blog for more advice that will help you get customers for your web business.