Web Site Design and Development Process

Purpose
Purpose of building a website ranges from Personal Website, Informative Website, Company/Organization Website, Commercial Website, Entertainment Website, Non-profit Website, Social Networking Website, News Website, Product Review Website and Blog/forum.

Though it is not mandatory to have a purpose to own a website, you can just have a website!

Requirement Analysis
Got a purpose to start a website? Good! Now start analyzing requirements to get started.

If you are going to build a personal website you have to make sure website will be displaying information about you and about your profession or hobbies in an elegant way.

The requirement for a company website is to provide maximum information about the company, products, services, process and mainly the contact information. Website should be an easy tool for clients to communicate with the company so providing an enquiry form and displaying contact information is a must.

If it is going to be commercial websitethe main requirement is to drag more customers into your business. The website should be more user-friendly and it should be projecting products attractive to eyes. Ecommerce website’s main requirement is to sell products online so there should not be heavy graphics or animations diverting customer’s concentration from product sections.

Entertainment websites such as gaming websites, music websites and movie websites should look fantasized. They should make user to become regular visitors so the overall theme and content of the website should be revised often to make the visitors feel the website is updated regularly.

A Non-profit website should convey its motto and services to the visitors. The main requirement of the website is to make people involve in their services by either participating in their activities and to donate money. The website should clearly project their services, recent news and events on their homepage and an online payment system will be easier for them to gather donations worldwide.

The basic requirement of a social networking website is to form a network of humans depending on their hobbies, interests, professions, locations and many more. Website should be easier for a person to find another person who shares the same interest or hobby. The website should also very user friendly for updating and sharing contents.

News website’s main requirement is to get the latest news to the visitors. Users should have provision to get news based on their location, field or interest. Visitors should be provided provision to subscribe for news on their interest using RSS or email notifications.

Nowadays online shopping is getting familiar worldwide and also it is easy for people to compare and buy products. So here comes the requirement for product review websites which provide people information about pros and cons of a product and mainly price comparison of same product with various sellers. The reviews should be written by experts so when people find the reviews really help them great, they will come back to check reviews for other products.

Blogs and forums are getting popular as they allow people belonging to various locations, cultures, industries, ideas and interests to share information and to discuss on topics. The main requirement of a blog or a forum is to group data and easily searchable. The website should be clean and simple as most of the times text content is going to be prominent.

Content Development
Once the requirements are analyzed and finalized then its time to gather contents for the website.

Before starting the web design process you should have all contents ready such as company info, services list and details, product details, photos and all other required contents based on the website purpose.

It’s good to have all the text contents framed by a professional content writer as they will be aware of industry standards, recent activities and mainly SEO keywords. If you are capable of framing contents yourself it is better to review and revise few times.

Wire Frame
Got a purpose, requirement is clear and content is ready. Let’s initiate the design process!

You may have lot of ideas for logos and website design. Also you may get lot of ideas from your friends, colleagues, business mentors and from researching information like reviewing your competitor websites and other related product websites.

Make all ideas in to wire frame structures, decide how the logo should look like, decide color and theme of logo and website. Make discussions with your business development people or your colleagues and make revisions to the wire frames and ideas on logo and website. Finally choose logo and website wire frames and decide the color theme for both.

Web Design
Wire frame is ready and now it’s time to start logo and web design.

Logo design should be elegant and deliver the motto of your business. It should be unique and identical to customers. It should solve multi purpose like using on website, business card, brochures, hoarding and even in coffee mugs if needed. So while designing the logo all these should be kept in mind and this makes the designing process easy and provides quick deliverables.

Now the logo is ready and its turn to start website design. The wire frame of homepage was well revised and refined and so it will make the website design process easier. The color theme of the website will be dependant on the logo theme as the logo needs to fit perfect and it brings an overall elegant look to the website.

Web Development
The design is finalized and the website development process can be initiated.

While developing a static website it should be more optimized and HTML code should be of latest standard. This helps the promotion of website easy in the internet among many search engines.

While developing a commercial ecommerce website, if the requirement is more general, using open source systems such as OS Commerce, Joomla, Drupal or Zen cart will reduce the development time and also reduces the development cost. Also minimal testing is enough as the systems are being used worldwide and they are providing regular updates and enhancements to the users.

If the ecommerce website requirement is not general and has major difference from usual ecommerce websites it is good to go for a custom ecommerce system. At most cases open source systems cannot be customized to a certain limit so custom ecommerce system can help to provide solutions for all your requirements. Also many people may need a unique content management system or a ecommerce system and the only solution is going for a custom development.

Testing & Launch
What are you waiting for? Now you can publish your website on internet and spread the word to whole world.

Though the website was tested well before launch in a beta version now it’s time to check the website with real data and real visitors. Check for withstanding power of the website with more traffic and data manipulation.

SEO & promotion
Your website is launched and did the world know it?

The website was launched to make you or your business familiar and to attract more visitors and clients. This can be done by search engine optimization and promotion. Promotion can be done via internet and by local media by advertising, word of mouth and by sending timely newsletters.

SEO includes process such as adding meta tags, titles, keywords, optimizing contents and standardizing codes. Writing blogs about the company or product can take your website to top of search engines and also regularly updating the website is a must.

Analyze Customer/End User Feedback
Now everybody knows your website and you may receive lot of feedback and queries from them.

Take time to read and analyze all feedbacks and some may be really helpful to improve the website visually or functionally. If your website is commercial you should mainly focus on the visitor point of view about the website. The website should be appealing to the end users and you should be ready to do enhancements that may attract more visitors.

Enhancement
Your website is familiar and now you have to make it more familiar.

Regular enhancements need to be done on visual design, functionality of the ecommerce system and on search engine optimization methods. When the website remains with the same look and feel and content, after few visits visitor may get bored ith your website as the world always look for new things. So keep updating your website!