Website Design Process
How we design, build and get your new website online.
Let's Talk
First of all, we will meet with you to gain an understanding of you and your business and your goals for the website. During this meeting, we discuss the content, pages and functionality required. We will also need your brand guidelines (if you have them) with logo and any colour schemes you have in mind. If you do not have any of these we can put you onto our creative team to help.
Wireframe Designs
Based on our initial meeting we will then start to lay out the various elements required for the website. This gives us a better idea of how everything will flow and fit together. Once we are happy with this wireframe design we start to develop it further. A wireframe is a very simple design whereby the various elements of a website will be sketched or laid out in a basic way.
Initial Website Designs
With the wireframe design complete, we then move on to taking your brand and incorporating it into the initial homepage design. This design will form the basis of what will be used for the final build. At this point, we may ask you to provide any content, imagery or videos. This helps you see exactly how the final website will look. If you do not have your content finalised, we will use dummy text and stock imagery to give you a hand in visualising the end goal.
Design Sign-off
Once all page layouts have been designed and you are happy with the way they look, everything will be signed off and the build can begin. This is an important part of the web design process, as once the build starts adding extra functionality may impact other elements of the development process.
The Build
Taking the signed-off designs, the site will now be coded and deployed on a testing server. Any functionality will be implemented and each layout from the design process will be built and tested across multiple viewing platforms. At this point, we will integrate the CMS (content management system) that will enable you to easily update the site with news, products, images etc. Our CMS of choice is WordPress, as we have found it to be very user friendly and extremely flexible to individual needs.
Live Server Setup
Before a website can go live, the domain name will need to be assigned to a server where the website will reside. There are various ways of achieving this and we will manage this for you.
Testing & Deployment
Once the website has been uploaded to the live server, it will be hidden so it can be tested one more time across all popular devices to ensure the end user gets the best possible experience. We will also ask you to check the website to make sure you are happy with both the look and feel plus the functionality and content.
GO LIVE!
Our work is still not done. After we have put the website live, it needs to be configured to be picked up by search engines. It will be added to Google Maps and any other platform that may be required and then optimised so it can easily be found search engines (SEO) based on the decided keywords and phrases.
Ongoing Support
A website is very rarely completely finished. Ideally, it will always be kept up to date with fresh and up to date content. Our marketing team specialise in researching your market and can help advise on the type of content that will help your website perform well. If you require extra functionality such as an online shop, booking form or anything else, contact our digital team and we can discuss options with you.