What's the process of designing a website?

Design and development of a website – what's the process?

Let’s face it: in this digital age, your website is one of the most visible parts of your company’s public persona. Even if you have brick-and-mortar locations, your website remains an important place where customers can learn about and purchase the services and products you offer.

Plus, your website gives potential customers a lasting first impression that they won’t easily shake. This makes the process of designing a website a critical part of nearly every industry. Poorly designed websites will frustrate and deter visitors, while well-made and responsively designed ones will boost web traffic and boost their owners' growth.

While there’s no formal consensus about the stages of website development, the typical process almost always includes four main phases: planning, designing, creating, and launching.

At Adchitects, we’re the process nerds — web designers committed to our detailed five-step web designing process that consistently yields extraordinary results that are both within budget and in line with the client’s vision. Now, let’s take a deep dive into our website development process. In the following article, we will explain what it's about and outline the pros and cons of our approach.

Our values

Although we’re big believers in the importance of set plans and processes, our values govern everything we do and deeply influence our approach. That’s where our process really begins.

Good communication

We invest time and energy into establishing effective lines of communication with our collaborators. For us, good communication means three things.

• Transparency – To build and maintain trust, we tell you what to expect from day one. We also make our progress easily visible and trackable. We believe that complete transparency drives healthy communication.
• Clarity – Making impersonal pitches filled with jargon is not our style of doing business. Instead, we communicate with you clearly and politely. In addition, we do our best to ensure that we’re as straightforward and easy to understand as possible. We always want to be on the same page. And on the off chance we aren’t, we’ll reach out to clear things up instead of making assumptions that could lead to another misunderstanding.
• Checking in – Good communication is also about listening and checking in. We use email and channels like ClickUp to keep you in the loop and address your questions or concerns along the way.

Attention to detail

For us, design is about the details. We’re proud of our work and care much more about producing a few high-quality digital products than dozens of average-quality products that don’t meet our standards.

Our fantastic team of developers and designers use their skills to deliver dazzling websites with impeccable performance. We care about every pixel and every line of code.

Planning ahead

On-time and on-budget' is our motto, and our project managers ensure that each project is on the right track to success. When we built our own website, we learned first-hand that timelines and deadlines were absolutely necessary for success.

The initial planning stages are critical for defining the goals, outcomes, timeline, and budget so that each project, no matter the size, can stay organized.

Website design and development: our approach

Speaking of planning, we’ve honed our approach to website design and development to create our unique five-step process. Also called the web development lifecycle, this process outlines the steps we take to complete each project we undertake.

We begin by getting to know you and your company, as well as by establishing the project scope, budget, and timeline. Then, we work diligently to design and code your dream website. Once it's complete, you can rest assured that we’ll be with you over the long haul to maintain and optimize your digital product.

As inspired by our values, this web development process establishes a genuine collaborative partnership between Adchitects and the client. It fosters the kind of honesty, creativity, and innovation necessary to create world-class websites that are both visually stunning and functional.

So, how do we do it?

Step 1: Onboarding & Kick-off

This first step in our website designing and development process is what really sets us apart. Rather than jumping into the planning stage, we want to get to know you. Our project onboarding consists of a face-to-face or screen-to-screen meeting with our CEO and your dedicated Project Manager, both of whom will facilitate the early planning and preparation phases.

To give you transparent oversight over the project and its progress, we’ll:

• Walk you through all of the steps of our process in detail
• Introduce you to our project management tools

When this step is behind us, we get to build our partnership on a strong and reliable foundation.

Step 2: Discover & Plan

In this step, some of the most important work takes place, and it's highly collaborative. After we’ve built that foundation we mentioned in the previous step, we want to dive deeper into exactly what it is that you’re looking for. At this stage, we will:

• Get to know the ins and outs of your company and your brand
• Establish your goals for a website
• Determine the needs of your target audience online
• Introduce you to your team of designers—depending on the project’s needs, that usually includes two UX/UI designers working in tandem to cover most user-related challenges
• Outline the project’s objectives
• Confirm and finalize your official project scope, budget, and timeline, which are created based on the information we received during the sales and onboarding processes

In other words, this step results in the creation of a detailed roadmap for the project. With this roadmap, both you and our team know exactly what’s coming and the budgetary and time constraints surrounding the next steps.

Step 3: Design & Development

Once you’ve reviewed the scope, budget, and timeline and given the project the go-ahead, the designer will begin conceptualizing what your new website is going to look like. Using Sketch and Invision, they’ll create an early mock-up of your dream website, usually starting with a partial webpage that you’ll then review in detail.

By seeking out early feedback and confirmation, we can confidently incorporate your vision into the entire project. Typically, we enlist a second designer after the initial webpage approval. This allows us to create your website more efficiently. But even as we move forward with the next phases of design, we remain as agile and collaborative as possible, always in constant communication through comments on Invision and project management software.

This is also a step that includes considerable collaboration between the designer and the developer on your project team. The developer, who will code and build the actual digital product in Step 4, will be present in Step 3 to ensure that the aesthetic and functional aspects of your website will work in harmony with one another.

Step 4: Implement

Because the developer has been a part of the project team from the beginning and worked in tandem with the designer in Step 3, this step is simply an implementation of your vision. The developer will write the code to create the website exactly as:

• The designer imagined
• You approved

Because attention to detail is the name of the game, our quality assurance team will make sure that any bugs in the code are discovered and fixed during this step. By the time you review your brand new website, it will be pristine and have that wow factor you’re looking for.

The final component of this step is the online equivalent of a red carpet ribbon-cutting ceremony: the launch. We’ll deliver your product on time so that you can have your website up and running just as planned.

Step 5: Care & Optimize

Once your website’s live, we stick around to make sure that your product continues to give you what you need. During this step, we:

• Provide website maintenance
• Assist you with SEO or SEM
• Implement security measures
• Add new features or changes

We take our partnerships seriously, so we won’t ghost you as soon as we deliver your product. We’re in the thick of it with you, attending to your red alerts and mitigating future problems by acting proactively.

The pros and cons of our approach

Our approach is all about taking the necessary time to establish a relationship with you so that we can provide you with the best digital product possible. While we believe this process works, it may not be the right fit for every client.

The pros

Because we have a robust team that combines the best of both the tech and creative worlds, we’re able to deliver the right blend of website design and development. This results in websites that are:

• Aesthetically pleasing and memorable
• Remarkably easy to navigate

As a smaller organization, we also pride ourselves in our individual approach. We can engage with you on a level that you won’t find with bigger companies. This means we can more effectively:

• Focus on the people behind your company
• Capture the essence of your brand

With a better understanding of who you are, we can channel your brand into everything on your site, from the images and color palette to the typography used.

The cons

Our five stages of web development of a website are meant to establish an authentic partnership, as well as open clear lines of communication. It’s an approach that’s both collaborative and hands-on. This means it may not be the best arrangement for clients looking for:

• A more hands-off approach
• A website for the lowest price and with the quickest turnaround possible