Pixbrand Team
Published: 04/07/2024
- App Development
- Digital Marketing
- Ecommerce
- Seo
- shopify
- UI/UX Design
- Web Development
- woocommerce
Steps to Great Web Design
Speed is subjective for both service providers as well as clients when it comes to creating and delivering a web design. While a typical web design can get ready within 3 to 4 weeks, the content creation and planning can take the same amount of time, which can lead up to 8-10 weeks for the final delivery.
From the side of the web design company, this could be a quick process, while the customer might feel that it’s a pretty long time to get them a website. Of course, as a client, the wait can also become intolerable because you would like to become a part of the digital era and take on your competitors head-on.
A pretty good confusion to have, one would say.
For web design teams, tackling this situation of taking their own sweet time while also not giving the impression of waiting for client is a tricky balance to pull off. The key to ensuring that lies in making the entire web design workflow a collaborative process.
In a web design process, there are multiple ways to make that happen: having the right communication, offering the best support, as well as eliminating all gaps in the web design process because having it any other way can lead to a lot of confusion.
What are the Steps to Designing a Website?
The web design process involves multiple steps that begin from the discovery stage to delivering the final version and providing maintenance, which are undertaken by design teams for clients to get the best results.
There are 6 steps to the design process, which we are highlighting below:
1. Design Brief
This begins with the first contact to what the project is, and is a crucial first step, as everything discussed here will be influencing the final product. In case an important detail is missed here, it can lead to a different product than what the client envisioned, leading to wasted time, efforts, and costs.
The web design company gathers all the required information to get started with the process. A right direction to this process is given by having a clear understanding about what the client's expectations are, and they should be aware of the entire process.
2. Planning
Once all the important information has been gathered from the client and a clear goal has been set, there needs to be proper planning for the entire design process. This step also involves a fair bit of extensive research, where the team has a lot of brainstorming sessions and creating prototypes suited to client expectations.
It covers various aspects of creating a web design, like:
- Information Structure: It defines the structure needed for how the content will be shaped, because it crafts the foundation of any projects in the future. Because everything will be based on this foundation, there’s a need to think it out pretty clearly.
- Sitemap: The sitemap lays out the requirements for the website architecture and establishes relationships between different pages of the website.
- Wireframes: In this step of the process, the team works on creating the initial mockups of the website. While they don’t have any features mentioned as such, the graphics and blocks for the information to be developed accordingly
3. Designing
The design step involves offering the right vibrancy, colors, and designations to the monochrome elements that were incorporated and approved in the final wireframe. Design features, elements, and styling attributes will be responsible in creating the overall aesthetics and a general ecosystem of the website.
Because this process involves finding the right kind of design influences, there’s a fair bit of research involved, as the final output will be a big contributor to the brand identity, with aspects to look forward to, such as:
- Branding elements like a proper logo or mascot. These elements help in connecting a web identity to the overall brand identity of the customer, helping them create a sorted medium of transition, bringing a customer-centric user experience across all the channels.
- The color palette needs to be backed with good reason, as it’s the very first thing that a user sees when visiting the website.
- Typography elements such as font size, font families, and other properties which make the content on a website appear consistent and streamlined in different areas like headers, footers, and hero areas.
- Visual elements like icons, CTA buttons, and navigation cues on the website also contribute to the design part, which bring the whole website identity together.
4. Development Process
While the design stage involves bringing all appealing elements together, the development process brings all such attributes to life, so that they can ensure their functionality.
There are a few important phases involved in the development process:
- Converting the website design into a working HTML/CSS template.
- Addition of multiple functional units.
- Final testing.
There are a lot of other factors that come into play during the development process:
- Being aware of all the web standards so that it becomes an important asset.
- Choosing the right framework that suits the requirements laid out by the customer.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are another important aspect , so that the website can be accessed by anyone.
- Ensuring the site security to prevent online frauds and phishing attacks.
- Making efforts to keep the website SEO-friendly.
5. Website Launch
At this stage, the final website is all set for launch, however, it’s important to be prepared for unexpected challenges, as it’s not guaranteed that the launch will be as smooth as you expect it to be.
In the launch phase, a few activities are performed:
- Final testing on performance, functionality, and security.
- Integrating Google Analytics code to help with traffic generation and conversion.
- Deploying the website on the client server.
- Final UX testing.
6. Website Maintenance
Making the site live is not enough. While maintenance is never a part of the standard package, it can be an ideal obligation to indulge into, as it is marketing in itself. In an ideal scenario, there are a few maintenance services such as:
- Troubleshooting
- Support
- Updates and add-ons
- Integrating new features
- Content updates
Final Words
There are multiple types and sizes of a website, and while the requirements and final output might differ, the design and development process doesn’t really change. While it looks that way, web design is not a simple process, and there is a need for bringing in experts who can convert a web design plan into a sophisticated final product.
Pix Brand is among the leading web design companies offering the best web design and development services for a wide range of clients across the globe. Get in touch with the best web designing company in India.