Seven Steps to a Successful Website
People need websites and apps of all types and sorts. If you’re about to get one — this might be a useful guide. If you already have one and ever wondered how does the entire process look like — from an idea to a working website/app — here it is. And if you’re involved in creating websites at any stage, it still might be a good read.
Web development is my company’s area of expertise, so all other stages: design, UX, copywriting, SEO, advertising, etc., are something we touch on a daily basis. These are not our core services, but it’s our job to know a lot about each one of those disciplines.
Our customers are most often professionals and web-experienced people. Across all our branches we work mostly with customers who already have a complete design to be developed for them or for their own customers. Mostly, but not only. Quite often they might have a website or a web app up and running that needs extending, fixing or remaking in some way. There are others, with cool, nearly-designed websites that we can take from where they are at the moment and set them in motion.
And there are people who are just about to start from scratch. This applies to both some of my friends and some of our customers, although the friends are the majority here. These are people at ground zero, sometimes with little or no clue how to make a website happen.
So whether you are a beginner or a professional, go through the list below before starting your first or next web project. It’s not a detailed instruction, as “making websites or apps” means a thousand things and involves a countless number of solutions. Take it as a general manual for beginners and a kind of a checklist for web professionals.
- Goal
There are two types of people who need a website: those who should go for a custom-made one and those who don’t need it, at least for now. There are two main options on the table: getting a website done from the scratch or using a template. If your website means a lot to you, e.g. your business needs it to grow, that’s an important choice to make, as it will have impact on your future options.
If you’re about to launch a custom website that is supposed to achieve serious results and you don’t know how to do it — you’ll need at least a couple of professionals. That might involve web strategist, UX specialists, web designers, copywriters, web developers and web testers. Plus you might need different kinds of marketing and advertising, so SEO, SEM, social media and a bunch of other professionals should be considered.
All in all, the decision whether to use ready-made or custom solutions should be based, amongst other factors, on the website’s purpose, goal, target and reach. If you’re unable to make such decision yourself based on your needs and general web knowledge, it’s worth getting someone to advise you. This might turn out to be cheaper than a possible mistake.
2. Strategy
The secret behind any successful undertaking is specifying the target group we want to reach with our product or service. The same applies to websites: you just have to know who is your audience, how and when to reach them and what methods and channels should be involved.
If you don’t have time or experience to create a strategy yourself, consider hiring an agency. Creative/interactive/web agencies are a good choice if you’re looking for comprehensive care: in many cases that’s the way to go. You will still have to work closely with such team as they will have at least a couple of questions and won’t hesitate to ask — for your own good.
The strategists will draw a general idea/plan for your website. They might also be project managers at the same time, overseeing the entire process. I’d say there should be a separate person for that, but many would probably disagree.
Whether you hire an agency or decide to hire separate professionals for each part of the website, the general process will be similar, only in the second case you are going to be the project manager, overseeing all stages.
3. Content
The content is the heart of your website and the main reason the audience visits you. Creating the whole content before even thinking about the design will make you focus on what you really need and want to get across. If you’re not good at writing content, consider hiring a copywriter. The right content makes a big difference: a poor website in general, but with really powerful copy is going to work, at least a bit. And a great looking website with terrible copy, will not work for sure.
That doesn’t change the fact that lousy designs are no solution either.
4. Design
The next step is the visual part. Web design is not only graphic and interface design, it’s a very broad discipline, going from user experience, through interface design to all graphic design.
As mentioned at the beginning, there are two ways to go: purchasing a ready-made theme or hiring a designer for a custom project. Going for a template may sound like an easier option, but in fact, with literally thousands of themes available, hunting for the perfect one is pretty much like looking for a needle in a haystack. And when after all these long hours spent on browsing theme markets you finally have your ideal template, you can skip to the next step, which is the actual web development.
A more expensive, but definitely very rewarding option is a custom design. Good studios hire both designers and UX/UI specialists for the creating a complete and coherent web experience. Sometimes the UX professionals will cover the entire strategy part, but their crucial job is to make users feel good while interacting with your website (or the entire brand). This covers a variety of ways people get in touch with your website. The UX people will also take care of the things like setting paths around the website for your customers/users and defining the most useable solutions for them.
Quite many UX specialists originally come from graphic/interface design, being former or active designers, but there are psychologists, copywriters or managers of different sorts involved.
Now a graphic and interface designer will be required to create the entire visual part of the website. Some designers create masterpieces, stunning, beautiful designs. This combined with carefully considered user experience makes a website truly remarkable.
5. Development
With all pixels on board, it’s time to get the website running. The developers will turn the design into the actual website, with all effects, animations, behaviours, features, elements and management systems that make it alive and interactive. Web development is a vast, endless discipline and the more we learn, the less we know: there is always a new technology to be discovered and new things possible.
If you purchased a ready-made template, a developer will customize it so it fits your needs, but remember that theme modifications make sense to a certain extent. If you need deep modifications, it might be worth going for a custom website designed from scratch. And keep in mind that most developers are not designers, so they can do miracles while coding, but many of them won’t feel comfortable with making too many changes to the original design.
6. Tests
When the developers are done, it’s time to test the entire thing. A website is a piece of software, often a big one, and it’s expected to work on various screens, devices, systems and browser. As such, each website requires in-depth tests on both front-end and back-end.
7. Launch
When the quality checks are done and it everything works like a charm, the developer will deploy the project and launch it live. And this is where the whole adventure begins…
Conclusion
Sheesh! That was long. Going through this whole process might seem difficult and that’s how it is. It takes a vast amount of knowledge lots of work to invent, design and build good websites. When the process is finished, it’s time to go back to strategy. After all, you need your website for a purpose. Now go, promote it and make it work for you, whatever your goal is. Good luck!
