Web Design & Development Services
How We Build Websites
The process of building a website is different for every project, but there are always some similarities. The following text outlines a typical project from start to finish and details branches in the process that can occur depending on the nature of the job. It’s quite common for the process to start at any stage e.g. if we’re brought in to code the site but not design it, or to do some post-launch search engine optimisation.
Pre-Site Production
Before you start planning your site you need to ask yourself some questions so you can focus on your aims and determine your budget.
Questions
- Why do you want a site?
- Is the site for selling your products? If so, do you change you inventory regularly?
- Do your competitors have websites? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
- Do you want to accept credit card payments?
Once you have the answers to these questions you’ll probably know what type of site you need. Most fall into one of the following three categories:
Brochure site
Simple information about the company. An online presence which raises your profile and allows customers to read more about your services/products and business approach.
Online shop
Somewhere to sell your products online. Usually requires a payment system so credit cards can be accepted. Can employ a Content Management System so products can be added and updated if required.
Web-based application
A tool for your staff to use. Perhaps a way of centralising sales data, updating schedules or gathering information. Generally used on company intranets or in secure areas of websites.
As a general rule, the first type of site is the least expensive and the last is the most expensive.
So Why Have a Website?
A really good site is an investment. It functions as a salesman who’s available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Of course, your salesman needs to look presentable and know his stuff, and you need to pay him a decent wage.
When you’re determining your budget for a site, make sure you make an allowance for advertising if search engine results will be important to you. Some people aren’t bothered by search engine rankings at all. If all your site is there for is so you can hand out business cards and direct people to extra information, there’s not much point in getting het up about your Google ranking. If you have an existing business and are thinking of moving into selling online, you probably do want to apportion some budget towards search engine optimisation. If you only plan on selling online, you definitely need a budget.
Bear in mind that to really get the best out of your site you need to continue to invest in it after its launch. Add fresh content in the form of news items or useful articles. Get links from other sites to help with search engine placement. Set up a pay per click ad campaign to lure in more customers. Perhaps have themed designs for holidays such as Halloween and Bonfire Night. Keeping your site active is the key to turning visitors into repeat visitors.
Once you have a budget worked out, it’s time to get the experts in.
Contact Your Web Designer
In an ideal project it’s at this stage that we get involved. It’s best to get a web designer on board early on because we have access to information and knowledge about the web which you probably don’t. A good web designer will be able to give you information on the following vital topics.
Keywords & Copy
If you want your site to be ranked well in search engines you need to construct your copy according to certain guidelines. You need to make a list of key words and phrases which people searching for your site are likely to use in search engines. Once you have these words you can begin to construct your copy. See Writing Copy For The Web for more details.
Domain & Hosting
It is certainly a good idea to register your company name as a domain but you might also find it useful to register a domain containing your keywords. This will give you a boost in search engines. If you haven’t yet decided on a company name you can use your keywords research to help you think of one.
Web hosting is probably the most important aspect in running a successful site. It needs to be fast and reliable. Don’t skimp on hosting or you will regret it. It may seem like you’ve got yourself a bargain if you find incredibly cheap hosting but ask yourself this – does the money you save on hosting exceed the money you lose when your site is unavailable?
The feature set of your hosting package will depend on the type of site you want built. We’ll recommend a good host that fits your budget and the project’s requirements. See the domain & hosting advice page for some of our recommendations.
Accessibility
You’ll also need to know about your legal obligations regarding disabled access. In the UK all public websites must comply with the Disability Discrimination Act. See the accessibility page for more details on how to avoid breaking the law and alienating potential customers.
Copy Writing & Database Design
Once you’re informed about what content your site needs you can go off and create it while we come up with some designs. We’ll provide you with all the information you need to write your copy but we won’t write it for you. You know your business much better than we do. If you’re really stuck for inspiration we can suggest some copy writers we’ve worked with in the past. We’ll look over your copy when it’s done and make suggestions on how to improve it if possible.
If your site requires a database to drive it – if you’re selling products or writing articles, for example – we’ll begin planning the structure of it at this stage too. This basically entails working out exactly what data you need to store in the database, the relationships between different types of data and how to transfer it from your existing storage medium to a web compatible format. After hosting, your database is probably the most important part of your site. It will contain all your product information, orders, customer information, news articles and so on. It’s vital that it be efficiently organised for fast access.
Design Stage
While you’re busy writing copy we’ll be putting together some designs. Sometimes clients want us to create designs for them, sometimes they already have designs that they want adapted for the web.
Design Required
If you want us to produce designs for you we’ll ask you to give us a list of your competitor’s sites and also some examples of sites you like the look and atmosphere of. This will give us an idea of the kind of styles you like. If you have any specific ideas about colours and imagery let us know and we’ll implement your ideas.
We’ll then go away and come up with a design or two for you to have a look at. It’s then a process of refining the design and adjusting it to your taste. We’ll make suggestions along the way and will point out issues regarding usability and optimisation if they crop up. Remember that web design is not just about the look of the site – it’s about how it performs.
Design Provided
If you have a designer already and want them to create the look for your site, they will need to be familiar with designing for the web. Print designers in particular often have problems adapting to the medium. Some useful tips can be found in our Guidelines for Designers article.
Design Approval
Once a design has been approved the process of building the site can begin. The first step is to create a basic page layout from the designs which can be tested across all the major browsers and platforms. We currently test in the following browsers:
- Internet Explorer 6 & 7
- Firefox
- Opera
- Safari
We also check our designs on small screen devices to ensure that they will work on PDAs and mobile phones.
If your site is an online shop or web application then we’ll begin working on the functionality at this stage too. We concentrate on the way everything works rather than how it looks. It’s easier to change the look of something than the way it functions so we get the basics right before working on the look.
By this stage you should be getting a feel for the way your site will look and function. We’ll set up a test version of the site on our development server so you can interact with it online. Your database will be populated with all your data, your copy will be added to the site and we’ll begin testing everything to make sure the customer facing part of the site works in a fluid and bug free manner.
Managing Your Content
If you decided that you needed a news page or article submission system, or that you wanted to be able to add and amend product information for your shop, you’ll also need a Content Management System (CMS).
Once we have the site working to a reasonable standard we’ll begin putting together the CMS. This is often the most labour intensive part of building a site as the CMS needs to be in a secure part of the site and be bullet proof in operation. Full documentation will be provided which you can refer to should you get stuck at any point, and we’ll be available to guide you if the documentation doesn’t cover your problem.
Going Live
After an intensive period of bug fixing, tweaking and polishing it will be time for the site to go live. We’ll upload the site to your web hosting account and set up the database. Your site will then be accessible across the web for any and all to see.
That’s not the end of the process though. We’ll then submit your domain to Google by way of a Google Sitemap. This is a plan view of the site structure that enables Google’s spiders to find and index your content easily. If you want a pay per click campaign, we’ll also advise you on setting this up and integrating it with your site.
Finally, we’ll monitor your site for a month or so after it’s launched to make sure that any final bugs or problems that may still be present can be worked out.
And that’s how we build websites!