7 Stages of Web Development: How are Websites Really Created?

There are a lot of stages in building a website; from the design and development phase, to website testing and the actual commercial launch. Contrary to popular belief, building a website is not just about having an idea and executing it without taking into consideration other elements that might affect the overall outcome of your finished website.

Have you already thought about what your website’s domain/URL is going to be? Where are you going to host your website? Have you thought about which pages you would like to incorporate on your website? Are you planning to add a newsletter on your site? What about a registration page? Will you require your potential customers to register on your page before they can view your lists of products and services? Are you going to sell online? While there are many other factors that need to be considered when building your website, these are usually most of the elements to take into consideration. Rather than going the DIY route on building your website using free website builders, it would be best to consult a web design company in order to come up with a professional website.

Here are 7 detailed steps on how we build websites at Sytian IT Solutions:

Stage 1. Data Gathering

A company must have a strong direction and a clear vision of what its ideal website is going to be. While it is alright to collaborate with your website developer to get a much more effective website, it’s important to note that your developers will rely on your company’s vision, mission, core values, brand, and position in the market.

Before anything else, ensure that you have content for your website- your company profile, a detailed description of your products and services, as well as pertinent contact information that you want to put in your website, etc.

Aside from the contents, you must also prepare the necessary images that are going to be used on your website- photos of your company’s board of directors, office staff, product shots, photos of your projects or portfolio, images of your company outings and seminars, and other photos that you want to incorporate into your website.

Your marketing collaterals are also needed for the designers to have a baseline template for the overall layout of your website. They will heavily rely on your company logo as well, ensure that your company logo clearly states what your company is all about. Changing your company logo in the middle of the web development will greatly impact the overall layout of your website as your designers will have to match your logo design with your website design to produce a coherent and well-balanced design layout.

Ensure that your web developers have all the details you want to incorporate in your site. While you don’t necessarily have the finished picture of how your website is going to look like, it’s important that you give your developers a clear vision of your website goals.

Here at Sytian Productions, we give our clients a comprehensive web design questionnaire which we ask them to fill-out in detail. This questionnaire will guide the clients as to the requirements and materials that they should prepare and will serve as our guide as to the general design of the website.

Stage 2. Design Conceptualization (Design Stage)

The first major stage of website development is the design stage. After the initial meeting and data gathering phase, your designer should have enough information about the overall design of your website. During this stage, your designer is ready to create your website layout.

The design phase is broken into three phases:

1. Creation of Wireframe layouts
   On the first phase, the designer will proceed with the creation of wireframes. A wireframe serves as the blueprint of the website. It’s a draft presentation of how the whole website would look like. During this stage, the designer will place each module— navigation menu, banner, footer, header, body, etc— into its ideal position. At this point, the designer is just planning his design layout before he proceeds to the actual designing process. Wireframes are just composed of boxes and dummy text and images to represent the overall positions of the different parts of the websites. Putting the actual colour and design elements will happen on the next phase. We normally submit two variations of wireframes so our clients can have design options.

   Here are a few samples of how a wireframe looks like:

    

   

   

   

   
   

    

2. Creation of Final Homepage + 1 Inner page layout
   After the client chooses a wireframes he likes, the designer is ready to proceed on the actual homepage design together with one inner page layout, designed to coincide with the homepage. These two layouts will be sent to the client for feedback. It’s just during this phase that the designer will actually incorporate colours, photos and other design elements on the layout. Ensure that you voice all your thoughts and ideas about the design. If you feel that there were unnecessary details incorporated in the design, it is imperative to let your designers know about this as early as possible.

   Most web development companies only offer at most 3-4 revisions to the design and you have to pay extra for additional revisions. However, we at Sytian Productions offer UNLIMITED layout revisions during the design phase and we don’t ask for extra payments. Make sure to utilize this, as design revisions during the programming phase are discouraged.

   This is how a final homepage and one inner page layout looks like:

   

   

   
   
3. Creation of remaining page layouts
   It is important to note that during this stage, any finished web design layout sent to you is just an image. It means that the finished designs are not yet clickable and there will be no animations yet. Once you have approved the home page design, your web designers are ready to design the rest of the inner pages of your site- About us page, Products and Services, Blog, Contact Us, etc.

   This example is a complete set of layout which consists of a home page, about us page, products page, and contact us page.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   
   

To finish the website according to the set timeline, it is vital to give your designers feedback as quickly as possible. Collaborate with them regularly to ensure that your ideal website is captured. Based on our experience, the design phase normally takes the longest out of the other phases of web development.

Stage 3. Website Programming/Coding phase

At this point, your website developer will code the approved layouts into the actual website. Once we finish this phase, you can browse through the site and click links from your navigation menu and have the overall feel of the site.

The completed website will be uploaded to a demo server for your private viewing. The demo website is not yet live to the public. Only the client and users who have access to the link can view the website.

Coding phase normally takes 2-4 weeks depending on the complexity of the website.

Stage 4. Website Testing and Revision

Once the web developer gives the client the demo link, the client will test each page of the website; whether all the links are working, if the website works properly on different browsers, including Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari, and whether all features and functionalities are working properly in mobile phones.

If there are any errors or bugs found, the client has to inform the web developer right away so he could revise and fix the errors as needed.

After all of the errors and bugs are fixed and after every web page has been approved by the client, from the overall layout of the website to its elements and functionalities, the website is now ready for the Project Turnover Phase.

Stage 5. Project Turnover

At this point, the web developer will set up a meeting with the client to teach him how to manage the entire website. Ensure that if you are the client, you ask all the questions you have to properly navigate through your site, and change its content. Project turn overs normally last about 30 minutes to an hour. At Sytian Productions, we provide our clients with a comprehensive user manual to guide them in managing the website.

Stage 6. Commercial Launch

Once everything is in place, your website is now ready to be launched. Using FTP (File Transfer Protocol), your website gets uploaded on your live server and domain. Some web development companies offer web hosting as part of their service too. Once this has been set up, your website is now live and can be seen by the public. Congratulations, you now have a fully functional website!

Stage 7. Continuous Support/Maintenance and Enhancements

After launching the new website, the source codes, Photoshop layouts and other pertinent files will be given to the client. All documents and photos that were used to build the site will all be sent to the client as well.

Similar to anything tangible, websites need constant care, maintenance and upgrades, whether fixing a broken link, adding a new product, or updating your content, your web developers should provide you support on all of these things. Ensure that you know the terms and conditions of the after sales support. At Sytian Productions, we offer 1 year free website maintenance and after sales support. We can help you via email, chat, phone call, skype meeting or face to face meeting. Did I mention we have a 24/7 tech support line as well?

Website owners must remember that there are renewals that have to be paid to keep the website up and running. Servers and domains are renewed on a yearly basis. Forgetting to pay for these renewals will ultimately lead to the expiration of your website. Not renewing or forgetting to renew might even lead to someone else purchasing your company domain! Make sure to mark your calendars and set alarms for renewals.

It’s not uncommon to change your mind during course of the website development process. Often times you might suddenly think of an idea that will look perfect on your website, while this often happens, you need to consider how it will affect the overall outcome of your website especially the project cost and timeline.

Even though building a website might seem like a straightforward task, it’s important to know that to build an effective and marketable company website, you and your chosen web development firm, must collaborate productively together in order to achieve a phenomenal website. Understanding each step carefully, will allow for a better communication between the parties involved. Ensure that you have a broad understanding of each step to have an effective communication with your web developers. It’s vital that you convey your ideas to your developers as clearly as possible. Let them know in the beginning what you want to incorporate on your website as these changes will greatly affect the project timeline. Constant communication between you and your developers are significant to the process of building your ultimate website.

Do you have any other tips to add on the different stages of building a website? Let us know your thoughts and comment your suggestions below!