Website Design Process Breakdown
Step 1. Purpose (Goal Analysis phase)
This step is the first and most important piece of the puzzle. Here, we determine the meaning of your small business website’s design and what you’re trying to accomplish. This gets us into a brainstorming arena of ideas and specific methods serving to pave the way for everything else that follows. After mapping our destination, we can then start zooming in on how we’re going to get there.
Step 2. Mission (Goal Analysis phase)
Your business’s mission and practices help shape the flow of your website’s place in the world. The mindset of your clients must correlate with not only your process, but how you communicate it. This step analyzes your primary business goals, ways you align your perceived and experience value, why your business is unique and how to get that across clearly and quickly to your prospects. It’s also very good at getting you into a thought process for delivering the best possible content we’ll explore in the Design & Build phase.
Step 3. Target Clients (Goal Analysis phase)
With a firm understanding of why your website will cater to your objectives and how it will do so, now we must look at whom we will be seeking. Simple things like font type, theme, content length, placement and a whole array of additional factors will appeal to some crowds over others. When determining your target clients or audience, we start to get a general idea of flow and function throughout your website. This is also important when considering whether your website will be appealing to the needs of some or many. We further explore your target clients with additional research and data to make sure we know who, where and how we’ll reach them. At the close of this step, we’ll have a solidified model of how your goals have to be met and what we need to employ to achieve that. With these understandings in place, we move onto your small business website design and close this phase.
Step 4. Theme (Design & Build phase)
This is where it’s safe to expect a lot of fun. Your theme directly commands the emotion you wish to convey to a given visitor. Here, we tap into our creative side and explore colors, fonts, sizes, shapes, animations, even psychology and much more. We want to make sure every page of your website reminds the viewer of where they are and why they should stay. Your website should feel welcoming, warm and professional. The subtleties of your elements, content, buttons and animations all must compliment each other without looking or feeling excessive. As the theme is the parenting first impression of your business, it is vital the visitor feels they are not only in the right place, but the best. Timing is paramount, too. Your value proposition should grab your prospect’s attention and run with it in under three seconds. And that’s just where things start.
Step 5. Layout (Design & Build phase)
When mapping out your website’s pages, every viewable area must be carefully configured. Where and how your content, media, elements and additional items appear is paramount. Too many words together in a sentence and the reader feels exhausted. Too few and the reader is left wondering. Like buttons? Plastering them everywhere shows the reader you have a cluttered mindset. Will they still want to consider doing business with you? There is a balancing act here. We’ll determine the best way to blend the position and sizing of your components to compliment everything else. Additionally, with most websites being accessed on a mobile device, it’s crucial we use what little screen real estate we have carefully. While we have to maintain speed, clarity and impact, we also have to ensure all visitors get the same experience from any device. Your layout is first conceptualized as a mockup, where we go over desktop and mobile page navigation, element placement, pictures, text boxes, calls-to-action(CTA’s) and more.
Step 6. Content (Design & Build phase)
Trust and clear communication are everything to everyone, anywhere. Always. You can build – or break – trust by miscommunicating or misplacing a single picture, sentence, testimonial or statement. Your content size, styling, placement, length and timing are critical. This is also one of the core areas you’re graded in with SEO. In this final step of your Design & Build phase, we look at everything from keyword phrasing to sentence structuring and readability. We’ll look over all messages and media you want to display and will make sure all wording is correctly spelled and checked for grammar and punctuation. Don’t like to write? Let our writers do it for you. We’ll take all previously gathered data of your business and will craft your content to appeal to the highest standards from there.
Step 7. Google Analytics (Optimize & Test phase)
Tracking visitors on your website should be easy and thorough. In this step, we install code and test parameters in Google Analytics to verify you can track and monitor as much activity as possible. Once we’ve tested these functions, we set-up and configure your GA account so you can easily check-in from a computer or your phone.
Step 8. Mobile Device (Optimize & Test phase)
In this step we test all areas of your small business website on several mobile devices with varying screen sizes. It is important to make sure your website can be easily navigated and that elements are appropriately sized and positioned. This will involve tweaks to margins, padding, containers and code. Although most websites are viewed only in Portrait mode, we also ensure Landscape mode is optimized for visitors who prefer a larger view.
Step 9. SEO (Optimize & Test phase)
As your site graphics, content and elements are set in place, now we start optimizing and testing the works. The goal here is to organically achieve the highest possible SEO score, website listing placement, performance, accessibility and best practices. This involves many tweaks and slight alterations throughout the entire coded structure of your website. During this step, we may make modifications to proposed content, keywords, images, components, and navigation. This modifications will allow your website to rank as highly as possible in Google, while guaranteeing a visitor has a smooth and pleasurable experience at discovery. On top of this, we make sure your polished, business website will load quickly on computer and mobile device screens. This process can take several weeks and is the final step before your website is launched for the world to see.
Website Design Process Breakdown
Step 1. Purpose (Goal Analysis phase)
This step is the first and most important piece of the puzzle. Here, we determine the meaning of your small business website’s design and what you’re trying to accomplish. This gets us into a brainstorming arena of ideas and specific methods serving to pave the way for everything else that follows. After mapping our destination, we can then start zooming in on how we’re going to get there.
Step 2. Mission (Goal Analysis phase)
Your business’s mission and practices help shape the flow of your website’s place in the world. The mindset of your clients must correlate with not only your process, but how you communicate it. This step analyzes your primary business goals, ways you align your perceived and experience value, why your business is unique and how to get that across clearly and quickly to your prospects. It’s also very good at getting you into a thought process for delivering the best possible content we’ll explore in the Design & Build phase.
Step 3. Target Clients (Goal Analysis phase)
With a firm understanding of why your website will cater to your objectives and how it will do so, now we must look at whom we will be seeking. Simple things like font type, theme, content length, placement and a whole array of additional factors will appeal to some crowds over others. When determining your target clients or audience, we start to get a general idea of flow and function throughout your website. This is also important when considering whether your website will be appealing to the needs of some or many. We further explore your target clients with additional research and data to make sure we know who, where and how we’ll reach them. At the close of this step, we’ll have a solidified model of how your goals have to be met and what we need to employ to achieve that. With these understandings in place, we move onto your small business website design and close this phase.
Step 4. Theme (Design & Build phase)
This is where it’s safe to expect a lot of fun. Your theme directly commands the emotion you wish to convey to a given visitor. Here, we tap into our creative side and explore colors, fonts, sizes, shapes, animations, even psychology and much more. We want to make sure every page of your website reminds the viewer of where they are and why they should stay. Your website should feel welcoming, warm and professional. The subtleties of your elements, content, buttons and animations all must compliment each other without looking or feeling excessive. As the theme is the parenting first impression of your business, it is vital the visitor feels they are not only in the right place, but the best. Timing is paramount, too. Your value proposition should grab your prospect’s attention and run with it in under three seconds. And that’s just where things start.
Step 5. Layout (Design & Build phase)
When mapping out your website’s pages, every viewable area must be carefully configured. Where and how your content, media, elements and additional items appear is paramount. Too many words together in a sentence and the reader feels exhausted. Too few and the reader is left wondering. Like buttons? Plastering them everywhere shows the reader you have a cluttered mindset. Will they still want to consider doing business with you? There is a balancing act here. We’ll determine the best way to blend the position and sizing of your components to compliment everything else. Additionally, with most websites being accessed on a mobile device, it’s crucial we use what little screen real estate we have carefully. While we have to maintain speed, clarity and impact, we also have to ensure all visitors get the same experience from any device. Your layout is first conceptualized as a mockup, where we go over desktop and mobile page navigation, element placement, pictures, text boxes, calls-to-action(CTA’s) and more.
Step 6. Content (Design & Build phase)
Trust and clear communication are everything to everyone, anywhere. Always. You can build – or break – trust by miscommunicating or misplacing a single picture, sentence, testimonial or statement. Your content size, styling, placement, length and timing are critical. This is also one of the core areas you’re graded in with SEO. In this final step of your Design & Build phase, we look at everything from keyword phrasing to sentence structuring and readability. We’ll look over all messages and media you want to display and will make sure all wording is correctly spelled and checked for grammar and punctuation. Don’t like to write? Let our writers do it for you. We’ll take all previously gathered data of your business and will craft your content to appeal to the highest standards from there.
Step 7. Google Analytics (Optimize & Test phase)
Tracking visitors on your website should be easy and thorough. In this step, we install code and test parameters in Google Analytics to verify you can track and monitor as much activity as possible. Once we’ve tested these functions, we set-up and configure your GA account so you can easily check-in from a computer or your phone.
Step 8. Mobile Device (Optimize & Test phase)
In this step we test all areas of your small business website on several mobile devices with varying screen sizes. It is important to make sure your website can be easily navigated and that elements are appropriately sized and positioned. This will involve tweaks to margins, padding, containers and code. Although most websites are viewed only in Portrait mode, we also ensure Landscape mode is optimized for visitors who prefer a larger view.
Step 9. SEO (Optimize & Test phase)
As your site graphics, content and elements are set in place, now we start optimizing and testing the works. The goal here is to organically achieve the highest possible SEO score, website listing placement, performance, accessibility and best practices. This involves many tweaks and slight alterations throughout the entire coded structure of your website. During this step, we may make modifications to proposed content, keywords, images, components, and navigation. This modifications will allow your website to rank as highly as possible in Google, while guaranteeing a visitor has a smooth and pleasurable experience at discovery. On top of this, we make sure your polished, business website will load quickly on computer and mobile device screens. This process can take several weeks and is the final step before your website is launched for the world to see.