Preparing and Planning Lesson

Website Development Phases

Creating a website is a process. A lot of research and planning goes into building one to make it effective. Take a look at the phases of website development.

Website Development
Planning

Planning

When planning a website you must first ask the question, “What is the purpose of the website?” Some answers for businesses would be the following:

To sell products and services.
To improve customer satisfaction through better service.
To reduce costs by streamlining and automating workflow.
To maximize profitability.
To market the business.
To improve customer service.
To integrate with other systems.

Next, you set goals for the site. To do this, a business must determine who their target market is. What are potential customers looking for? What are the characteristics of the target market? What products or services are being made available to reach them? Once you have answered these questions, you can begin designing your site.

At the beginning of the planning stage, start with a list of ideas to be included on the site and use this list to create an outline on paper. Once you have created the list of ideas and begun the outlining process, create a flowchart of the pages and links that you would like to see on your site. This is a visual way of showing the hierarchy of your pages within the website. Take a look at the site structure for the website of GAVS Flowers and More.

Website Structure example

Design

The designing phase is the creative phase of the website development process. It is about web and graphic design. In this phase, you will determine the look and feel of the website. A good design is understandable, uniform in look, interesting, and done from a user’s point of view. The purpose of the design should be to inform and persuade. In this phase, you are choosing the right colors, layout, graphics, and images to be responsive to the needs of your target market. Therefore, your target market should be in the back of your mind when designing your website.

Development

After the designing phase, there is a development phase also known as the ‘implementing phase.’ In this phase, the developer works on developing the actual live web project. This consists of integrating all the information that has been collected from the initial phases. Your web designer will take each graphic element from the prototypes and use them to create the actual usable site. This generally begins with developing the home page before moving on to creating a “shell” for the interior pages. The designer can then distribute your content throughout the site in its appropriate areas.

Launch

Publishing your website is an exciting milestone. It is what your business has been waiting for. Now it is time to make sure your target audience sees it. The first step is to select and register a domain name. It should be brief and suited to the content of your website. Next, purchase a web host that provides the bandwidth necessary to keep user traffic flowing smoothly. Back up your website files. Most importantly, implement a site map. Site maps aid search engines in accurately indexing your website. Lastly, test your website on different web browsers for functionality, content, and design. It is time to launch!

Maintenance

Give your website love and care by checking its performance regularly. Maintenance is an integral part of improving the website and keeping it running smoothly. A review of the website should be done on a consistent, planned basis. Checking to see if the content needs updating is pivotal. Viewing the design to make sure it is still working should also be part of your review. Making sure links are working and pages are loading properly is part of website maintenance.

Usability

A website should be designed with all users in mind. The main objective of website usability is for users to be able to find everything with ease and in the shortest time possible. If it is difficult to use, users will leave. Therefore, try to envision a real person accessing your site. A website with good usability will permit users to access, interact, and navigate with ease and in a safe manner. A website with good usability consists of some of the following:

An interactive homepage.
Consistency throughout the site.
Appropriate page layout.
Acceptable page speed.
Quality content.

IMAGES CREATED BY GAVS