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Website Development Planning Process

1. RESEARCH AND GOAL SETTING

As with any project, it is important to do proper research and set goals before beginning. By
setting goals, it will help the website to have a direction and will also help your business to
achieve specific accomplishments. The planning and goal setting process could take about 1-2
weeks to complete. It is a very important first step to creating a website that sells. There are a
few questions you should ask yourself during this phase: 

 What do I hope for my website to accomplish?

 Who is the audience I would like to target?
 What are the main goals of the website? 

By setting goals for your website, you will be helping the site to have a clear direction and
purpose. This is important to the rest of the steps. When setting your goals, you should think
about outlining what you would like the rest of the steps to look like. Step 1 will guide you
through the rest of the process smoothly.

The research part of this step has a few different purposes. There are so many examples out
there that it might be beneficial for you to look at and use some of the websites of your
competitors. This can help you to determine what you want and don’t want your website to
have. It is also important to do some research on the target audience you hope to draw in.

Different age groups may be looking for something different when they visit a website.
Understanding what your audience wants is crucial to planning the rest of your website. It is
also important to research keywords you’d like to use with your website. By developing your
website with SEO in mind, you will save yourself a lot of work in the future.

2. PLANNING THE SITE

Planning the website involves creating a wireframe and sitemap. This is an important step
because it is kind of like the skeleton of your site. This process can take about 2-6 weeks to
complete. The sitemap allows the developer to get an outline of what the site will look like,
what pages there will be and how they will interact with each other. This not only helps with
planning but is also beneficial to the user experience.

A user should be able to easily navigate a site, and this begins with the development of the
sitemap. Before you begin to plan content, a sitemap lets you design what the structure will
look like. Once the sitemap is completed, the other part of this step is to create a wireframe or
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mock-up. These are just visual representations of what the site will look like. This does not
include the layout details. That comes next.

3. DESIGNING THE LAYOUT

The details of the layout are what will give your website character. This is the step where you
get to be creative with pictures, videos and what kinds of things the customer will notice when
they come to your site. This process can take about 4-12 weeks from start to finish. The timing
depends on experience, time spent on the project, and how thorough the developer is. During
this step, it is especially important to keep referring back to the target audience you wish to
focus on.

Consider colors, logos, and anything that will encourage your audience to interact with the site.
By considering how you will create the layout of the website, you are attempting to bring the
website to life. It should help the audience to get a feel for your business or product. Please
note this step does not yet involve written content. That is the next step. The written content is
so important that it needs its own step.  

4. WRITING THE CONTENT

This step may be going on simultaneously with the other development planning steps. The
written content of a website is so important to its success. While this step may be happening
during other steps, it is one that is crucial and deserves a lot of expertise. It could take from 5 to
15 weeks. The written content on a website is going to help a visitor determine their next steps.
It is vital to drawing customers in and keeping them. There is a lot to consider when working on
the content of the website.

When determining what words to use, it is important that they are not too hard to understand.
A general rule is that you have to assume not everyone is going to want to read words that are
higher vocabulary. A website should have a vocabulary that the average person can
understand.

Again, considering the target audience is extremely important, especially when it comes to the
text being used to give customers information. This can determine what kinds of words and
voice will be used in the writing, which can create the mood for the content, whether it be good
or bad. It also involves creating catchy titles and headlines to draw people in.

Additionally, it is also a good idea to be well-versed in writing a call-to-action. This is what you
want the user to do after reading the content on the site.  The content should get customers
excited about buying a product or service. A website that has well-written content is going to
be much more successful than ones that do not.
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5. CODING THE WEBSITE

Now that all aspects of your website have been created, you are ready to actually begin
creating the website itself. The coding typically begins with the homepage and gradually
branches out to the other pages included in the site. This would be where the sitemap is
followed to ensure everything is coded correctly. The coding step could take from 6 to 15
weeks, depending on how much content and how intricate you would like your website to be. It
is also important to set up frameworks and CMS to make sure that everything will fit onto the
server during the installation process. You wouldn’t want to do all that work only to find out it
doesn’t fit.

Once the website is laid out according to the sitemap, it should be tested before moving any
further. If all works well, then the rest of the content should be added, and formatting should
be completed. This phase involves having a deep understanding of the technology you are
using. In fact, if you are looking to do most of the work yourself, you should at least consider
getting a developer to code for you, so that you can make sure everything works as planned.

During coding, don’t forget to consider factors such as SEO, CMS plugins, and any additional
tools you might be using for analyzing and testing the website in the future. If you consider
these things now, you will save yourself time and energy later. By keeping SEO in mind, you will
get better results, and more people will be exposed to your page. Anything worth doing is
worth doing right.

6. TESTING AND LAUNCHING

Before the website is launched, it is crucial that it is tested out by real users. All the links and
content should be tested to see if it works. Not only is it important to test out all the buttons
and everything on the site, but it is also important to test out what users think of it. There is
user testing that can be completed to make sure the website is giving users what they need to
be successful on the test.

Again, there are tools that can be used to determine if anything needs to be changed. Make
sure to check all written content, including spelling and grammar. If your website has forms,
ensure that they are working correctly as well. These might be important ways the users can
get in touch with you or sign up for alerts and messages. Without these working properly, it can
be very difficult for the user and also will be difficult for you to have a successful website. 

Don’t just check the website once, but check it over multiple times. When you are confident
that everything is in working order, you can go ahead and launch your website live. When it
comes to launching, you are finally ready and can do this by uploading it to the server. You will
need FTP (File Transfer Protocol) for this process. It is also important to make sure everything is
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running smoothly immediately after launching. Testing and launching may take 2-4 weeks to
complete.

7. MAINTENANCE

You might think your job is done once the website is launched, but this is not the case. Since
technology and products are changing more rapidly than ever before, it is important to stay up-
to-date with what is happening on the internet. Maintaining a website is hard work, but the
more effort put into its maintenance, the better. There are a few different pieces to website
upkeep.

For one, it should constantly be checked out for errors. When a user encounters an error, this
may be frustrating and may cause them to find what they are looking for somewhere else.
Errors can also completely block them from the information they need to make a decision on
purchasing a product or service. This is why it is important to not only test your website for user
experience before the launch, but after as well.

User-experience should be tested often, and it should be ongoing. This will ensure that if
something comes up, it can be fixed right away. A website that has constant broken links or
outdated content will not make its users happy. By having regular maintenance on a website,
bugs can be fixed as soon as they are detected. A problem cannot be fixed if it is not known. An
unhappy user means that you are losing current or potential customers.

Another important aspect of maintaining a website is to ensure that all content is current. This
means that the correct information is on the website such as contact information, pricing, and
customer reviews. By giving bad or outdated information, a customer will not be able to get in
touch with the business owner, complete a purchase, and it can be frustrating.

While maintaining a website can be important, it might seem like hard work. It is important to
know that there are many tools out there that can be downloaded right onto the website.
Reports can be sent daily or in other time increments to give you data and information about
how the site is performing 
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Website Development Process: Full Guide in 7 Steps

Despite conventional wisdom, the core part of website development and design is not
necessary the coding process. Indeed, such technologies as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript give the
web we know its shape and define the way we interact with the information. But what usually
stay behind the scenes and, at the same time, remain the crucial part of website development
life cycle are the stages of preliminary information gathering, detailed planning, and post-
launch maintenance.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how the general website development process may look like.
The overall number of development stages usually varies from five to eight, but every time the
whole picture stays pretty much the same. Let’s choose the average value. So, here are
seven main steps: 1) Information Gathering, 2) Planning, 3)Design, 4) Content Writing and
Assembly, 5) Coding, 6) Testing, Review and Launch, 7) Maintenance.

Website Development Timeline

When you think of building a website, your thoughts rotate around two main issues – price and
time. These two values depend largely on the size and scope of the project. To outline the
whole development process, you can create a website development timeline, adding tasks and
establishing milestones for your project. It is the best way to track your project implementation
to make sure you keep up with the deadline.

For this purpose, we prefer to use GanttPRO – a convenient intuitive Gantt chart for online
project planning. See the screenshot below:

We’ve prepared detailed description of the whole website development process, estimated

time for each step and a checklist to double check you don’t miss anything.

Website Development Life Cycle

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Step 1. Gathering Information: Purpose, Main Goals, and Target Audience

This stage, the stage of discovering and researching, determines how the subsequent steps will
look like. The most important task at this point is to get the clear understanding of your future
website purposes, the main goals you wish to get, and the target audience you want to attract
to your site. Such kind of a website development questionnaire helps to develop the best
strategy for further project management.

News portal differs from the entertainment websites, and online resources for teenagers looks
different than sites for adults. Different types of websites provide visitors with different
functionality which means that different technologies should be used according to the
purposes. A well described and detailed plan made on the basis of this pre-development data
can protect you from spending extra resources on solving the unexpected issues such as design
changing or adding the functionality that wasn’t initially planned.

Estimated time: from 1 to 2 weeks

Step 2. Planning: Sitemap and Wireframe Creation

At this stage of website development cycle, the developer creates the data that can give to a
customer an opportunity to judge how the entire site will look like.

On the basis of the information that was gathered together in the previous phase,
the sitemap is created. Here is the sitemap of XB Software website:
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The sitemap should describe the relations between the main areas of your website. Such
representation could help understand how usable the final product will be. It can show you the
“relationship” between the different pages of a website, so you can judge how easy it will be for
the end-user to find the required information or service if he starts from the main page. The
main reason behind the sitemap creation is to build a user-friendly and easy to navigate
website.

The sitemap allows you to understand how the inner structure of a website looks like, but
doesn’t describe the user interface. Sometimes, before you start to code or even work on a
design, there’s a necessity to get approval from a customer that everything looks fine so you
can begin the next phase of developing.
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Estimated time: from 2 to 6 weeks

Step 3. Design: Page Layouts, Review, and Approval Cycle

During the design phase, your website takes shape. All the visual content, such as images,
photos, and videos is created at this step. Once again, all the info that was gathered through
the first phase is crucial. The customer and target audience must be kept in mind while you
work on a design.

Website layout is the result of designer’s work. It can be a graphic sketch or an actual graphic

design. The primary function of the layout is to represent the information structure, visualize
the content, and demonstrate the basic functional. Layouts contain colors, logos, images and
can give a general understanding of the future product.

After that, the customer can review the layout and send you his feedback. If the client is not
sure about some aspects of your design, you should change the layout and send it back to him.
This cycle should be repeated until the customer is completely satisfied.

Estimated time: from 4 to 12 weeks

Step 4.  Content Writing and Assembly

Content writing and compiling usually overlaps with other stages of website creation, and its
role can’t be underestimated.  At this step it is necessary to put in writing the very essence
you’d like to communicate to the audience of your website, and add calls-to-action. Content
writing involves also creation of catching headlines, text editing, writing new text, compiling the
existing text, etc., which takes time and effort. As a rule, the client undertakes to provide
website content ready to migrate to the site. It is better when all website content is provided
before or during website coding.

Estimated time: from 5 to 15 weeks

Step 5. Coding

At this step, you can finally start creating the website itself. Graphic elements that have
been designed during the previous stages should be used to create an actual website. Usually,
the home page is created first, and then all sub-pages are added, according to the website
hierarchy that was previously created in the form of a sitemap. Frameworks and CMS should be
implemented to make sure that server can handle the installation and set-up smoothly.

All static web page elements that were designed during the mock-up and layout creation should
be created and tested. Then, special features and interactivity should be added. A deep
understanding of every website development technology that you’re going to use is crucial at
this phase.
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When you use CMS for site creation, you can also install CMS plugins at this step if there’s a
need. The other important step is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the optimization of
website elements ( e.g., title, description, keyword) that can help your site achieve higher
rankings in the search engines. And, once again, valid code is pretty important for SEO.

Estimated time: from 6 to 15 weeks

Step 6. Testing, Review and Launch

Testing is probably the most routine part of a process. Every single link should be tested to
make sure that there are no broken ones among them. You should check every form, every
script, run a spell-checking software to find possible typos. Use code validators to check if your
code follows the current web standards. Valid code is necessary, for example, if cross-browser
compatibility is important for you.

After you check and re-check your website, it’s time to upload it to a server. An FTP (File
Transfer Protocol) software is used for that purpose. After you deployed the files, you should
run yet another, final test to be sure that all your files have been installed correctly.

Estimated time: from 2 to 4 weeks

Step 7. Maintenance: Opinion Monitoring and Regular Updating

What’s important to remember is that a website is more a service than a product. It’s not
enough to “deliver” a website to a user. You should also make sure that everything works fine,
and everybody is satisfied and always be prepared to make changes in another case.

Feedback system added to the site will allow you to detect possible problems the end-users
face. The highest priority task in this case is to fix the problem as fast as you can. If you won’t,
you may find one day that your users prefer to use another website rather than put up with the
inconvenience.

The other important thing is keeping your website up to date. If you use a CMS, regular updates
will prevent you from bugs and decrease security risks.

Estimated time: ongoing