Many people think that you build a website and that’s it; you leave it and other people look at it. But creating websites doesn’t work like that in the digital age. You need to go through research, planning, design, and creation processes to make sure your website is going to work for you.
And then, after the site is live, you need to make sure you update it regularly, and run a continuous Search Engine Optimization (SEO) project and other marketing activities to make sure that it’s searchable online and that people can find and see it.
Here’s an outline of the website design and development process from the way that we do things:
- Know your customers: determine who your customers are; are they other businesses, retail customers, small or large businesses, young or old customers?
- Outline your features: what do you want your website to do? For instance, is it a going to be a store, a blog, somewhere for you to display your services, or where customers can book appointments?
- Plan your pages: outline how your site will display pages and content. For instance, list out the text content for your home page, product or services page, about us page, contact page, and any others that you’d like, such as your store, booking, or gallery pages. Use bullet points to make it easier. Keep in mind that it’s a good idea have some testimonial content too, either on a dedicated page, or as individual snippets throughout your website.
- Prioritize features and pages: determine which pages and features of the site are of the most importance, which features can be rolled out later, and which are of low priority. For instance, if you ultimately want to sell online, that can take a while to setup, so it’s generally a good idea to get your basic site live first, so that your SEO can start working for you whilst you are building your online store.
- Content: Collect your content together; this is all of your text, product or service info, pictures, logos, and contact details.
- Layout: Now start laying out your pages; where you want your text, pictures, menus, etc.
- Create: once the pages are sketched out, you can design them in whatever website software is appropriate to your project. Don’t forget to check your website on mobile devices too; many people view websites on their phones and if your layout isn’t mobile friendly, you could lose visitors and potential sales.
- Review: once ‘version 1’ of the site has been completed, review it, make any changes, then make it live.
- Build in initial SEO: Now is the time to build in all of your initial search engine optimization detail so that the internet knows that your website is there so that people can find it. SEO titles, SEO descriptions, keywords and phrases, alt-text for images, and titles for links all need to be added. Then you can submit the website to Google, upload the site map to Google Search Console, and add the site to Google Analytics for SEO tracking and analysis. This is all part of your digital marketing plan.
- Expand: Now that your initial site is live, you can move on to developing and rolling out your more advanced features. like you web stores, booking calendars, and so on.
- Review and Revise: The work doesn’t stop once all of your features are live. To keep your site fresh and relevant, you need to constantly review, revise, and update it so that it stays working for you. Fresh content can be in the form of new detail n a specific page, and new page or section, or a blog post.
- SEO updates: Remember to view your site in Google Analytics and Google Search Console regularly to check on performance and activity, so you can make updates to your SEO to make your site more searchable online.
As you can see, this can be a long process, but we are here to help and can make things much easier for you. We will advise and help as much as we can during the initial stages, but obviously, much of the research and collection of content is down to the person or business who needs the particular website in development.
On the flip-side, once the outline and content has been passed over to us, we then have the onus to get the job done, and of course, we’ll correspond with clients frequently to ensure we’re all moving in the right direction.
This kind of working methodology is commonly known as ‘growth-driven design’. It means that you don’t have to get everything done at once, that you can create a good-sized portion of your online presence to get you going and your SEO working whilst you work on other features.
Just like social media, websites are a constantly changing beast; change is good, Google likes to see sites change, adapt, and grow, just as your business does. And if we can help you grow your business online, then that will affect you offline too. It all works together, and we’re happy to help you wherever you need it.
Contact us to find out more.
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