Hiring someone to create your website can be a challenging decision. Every web designer has their own process, which is different than everyone else’s.

You might have lots of questions about what really goes into building your website, but without devoting hours on the phone talking to five web designers – how will you know who is right for the job?

That’s why I wrote this article.

I will walk you through our entire process of designing a website from start to finish, so you know exactly what you will get when you hire us.

So here are the 15 steps we use to create a high-performing website that works for your business.

1) First, we have a quick 15 minute call

Our process usually begins with a 15 minute zoom call where we get to know about your business and what you want to achieve from your new website.

We first take a look at your existing site (if you have one) and your ideas for the new site you want to build.

The purpose of this call is to understand your project goals and find out whether we are a right fit for each other. I only work with clients who I can really help, that’s why this call is important. We will also talk about your budget and I will give you an indication of what we charge for the similar type of work.

2) Discovery Meeting

The next step is a Discovery meeting, which usually takes around 30 minutes to an hour (again over Zoom).

In this meeting, we will be looking at your website goals and the features you want to include on your website. I also need to understand why you need a new website and how it fits into the bigger picture of your marketing and sales. That allows us to know if we can also help you with setting up your marketing or lead generation system.

We can also include a quote for writing your website content. Most of our clients hire us to write the content for their new site. This is totally an optional service. You can either write your own content or we can do that for you.

3) We give you a quote

When we have all your requirements in place, we will prepare and send you a proposal for all the features you requested. We will have a call to present the proposal to you and answer any of your concerns or questions you might have.

Once you agree, you sign the proposal and pay the initial deposit. Then we will book your project in our system and send you a schedule which outlines the dates and how we’ll work together going forward.

4) In-Depth Research

We take the time to conduct in-depth research on your industry and competitors. This will give us a good understanding of what you offer, who your customers are, what is their buying journey, and more.

This will help us map out a successful plan to create your website that not only looks professional and is easy to use, but also educate your customers and make them trust in your business and the services or products you offer.

5) Preparing The Sitemap

Next we will identify what pages will your website need and what will be the main sections of your website. Then we’ll create a sitemap (a hierarchical map) to help you get an overview and make sure nothing is missed.

6) Content Production (Your role comes in)

Once we’re done mapping out the pages required, next comes the content production, where you write copies for all web pages (or we do this for you if it’s part of your requirements).

We set a deadline to complete content writing so that we can soon start working on designing the website.

It is a very crucial part of your website development, because it’s only the words on your website that engage your audience and sell your services or offer, so we want your cooperation to make sure we get it right and on time.

7) Home Page Mockup

Now is the time when our team goes in the background and designs the first mockup of your home page.

The home page is the focal point of any website. It is the first page a visitor sees when they arrive on your website and it should be designed to make an impression that will keep them engaged.

8) You See The Design and Give Feedback

This is the exciting part for you. This is the first time you get to see the home page design. And we will need your feedback before we move forward with the rest of the project.

Please note: We request you to provide feedback as early as possible (max one week). That helps us correct or change anything based on your feedback and move forward to the next stage on time.

9) Continue with Other Pages Designs

Once we have the home page settled, we then start designing the layouts for other pages. The colours and styles of other pages will match the homepage, but layouts and structures will obviously be different, based on content placement and images.

10) Forms and CRM Integration

This is one of the crucial steps of your website, that gets enquiries and leads into your business, so it needs to be set up properly.

Once we are done with designing the web pages, we design the required landing pages. The next step is to set up your forms that are used to collect customers details, for example enquiry forms, opt-in forms on landing pages or newsletters.

And then we integrate those forms on landing pages, which further is linked to your CRM where you manage all your list of customers and leads.

11) Testing and Final Feedback

Next comes the testing phase before going live.

We test your new website on all major browsers to ensure that it is up-to-date with current standards. This will also identify any bugs or errors in your design which need fixing. We also take your final feedback as well, to ensure everything meets your expectations.

12) Going Live

Once you are happy with how the website looks and performs, we prepare to go live. We follow our 15 points checklist to ensure the migration of your new website goes smoothly without affecting the traffic of your current website.

The migration just takes maximum an hour, and we usually do this on a Friday afternoon, when there is minimum traffic to your current site and it does not affect much of your business activity online.

13) Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console

After your new website is up and running, we submit your sitemap (sitemap is a collection of URLs of your web pages) to Google for indexing.

Chances are they would index and save details of your new web pages in the next 24 hours or sometimes it may take 2-3 days. That totally depends on how frequently Google is crawling your website.

14) Integrating Google Analytics and FB Pixel

Once Google is done with indexing your new web pages, we will then create your visitor tracking account on Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. They are the free tools provided by Google and Facebook to help you measure your traffic and website performance.

These are quite valuable tools where you’ll see monthly visitor numbers and what pages are the most popular or most visited. It will help you understand your website visitors with a little more detail.

15) Ongoing Support and Care

Now you own your brand new website that you can proudly share with everyone – your clients, peers, friends and family.

This is just the first phase of your website life cycle. You will need to take care of few things to keep it running and fully functional:

• Taking daily backups (on-site and cloud)
• Security scanning for detecting any malware or viruses
• Ongoing content changes like adding a new blog post, changing pictures or adding a new page.

No worries. We will still be there to support you. That’s why we have a monthly care plan to help our clients get peace of mind and never have to worry about website care, updates or backups again. Here are our care packages if you’d like to know more.

Summary

Now you get it, our entire web design process we follow from start to finish. I didn’t include every technical aspect of what our team does in the background, because that would be too overwhelming for you.

I just wanted to show you what are all the steps we take when we work together – in creating your website off the ground and making it fully functional.

I hope this post answered some questions about how we build websites. So you know exactly what to expect and when.

If you’d like to have a chat to see if we can help you, feel free to book a 15 minute call with our team here.