Today in the current era, everyone wants to be a part of the digital world. And a website is the entry point to opt-in for an online presence. It is the face of your company that looks like your physical shop.
It will help people with their research and understand how easy to navigate the same products/services. That they are looking,
Every day 5.45L+ websites are launched on the internet. But very few of them become popular because there are many sites with good content, but the design is dull. The site with excellent design wants proper maintenance. Web development is not only about implementing the codes. Web design also plays an essential role in the development process to make it more user-friendly.
So, what are we missing? What we usually miss are the stages of preliminary information gathering, detailed planning, and post-launch maintenance, A crucial part of the web development life cycle
So, here are the 7 Main Steps of Web Development
1) Information Gathering
2) Detailed Planning
3) Web Design
4) Content Creation
5) Web Development (Coding)
6) Quality Testing, Review, and Launch
7) Maintenance
1. Gathering Information: Purpose, Main goal, and Target audience
This stage helps discover, research, and determines how the following steps will look. Still, most people ignore this critical step in the development process.
To ensure that your web design is on the right path, get a clear understanding of your future website purposes. Focus on the target audience you want to attract to your site.
It depends on the type of business, whether you want to sell products or services. The travel portal is different from the educational website. So, different types of websites mean diverse functionality. It means various technologies use according to the goal.
2. Planning: Sitemap and Wireframe Creation
Now you have sufficient information about the business. The developer generates the data that allows a customer to assess how the entire site will look is called the sitemaps and wireframe.
The site map helps to make a website user-friendly. Mostly before the start, It is important to get approval from a customer that everything looks fine so you can move to the next phase of development.
In this case, a wireframe or mock-up needs to create. A wireframe is a visual representation of the user interface. (UI) which describes the Parts that will guide you about the page and its location.
3. Design: Page Layouts, Web design
During Your web design phase, All the visual content such as images, photos, and videos created is called website layout.
It would look appealing according to the target audience. A layout contains colors, logos, and images and can give a general understanding of the future product.
4. Content Writing
Content writing usually overlaps with other stages of web development. But it is an equally important stage of web development. Excellent and engaging content involves catching headlines, text editing, and writing new text is necessary to grab the Interest of the Audience.
Content writing helps to write and publish to fulfill business objectives. Good content expands brand awareness, makes people aware of new products or services, produces leads, or attracts new clients for the business.
5. Web Development (Coding)
In this stage, start adding a Layer of Website Development. Graphic elements and codes make it function and run smoothly.
Usually, the home page creates first, and then all sub-pages are added, as per the website hierarchy created as mentioned in the sitemap. Frameworks and CMS need to implement so that the server can handle the installation and set-up smoothly. The other important step is Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the optimization of a website.
6. Testing
It is probably the most routine part of a process. Every page and link needs to be tested before launch to make sure no broken ones among them.
Check each form, and script, and run spell-checking software to find possible typos. Apply code validators to check if your code follows the current web development standards because valid code is necessary. In this stage, the site testing needs several things including,
• Website loading speed
• Cross-browser compatibility
• Multiple screen tests.
All the necessary tests are performed on a website before launching it.
7. Maintenance
It’s important to remember that a website is more of a service than a product. There are many tasks, to be carried out by the professionals after the website launch, such as making sure everybody is satisfied, working on feedback, and the post-development support.
It will allow you to detect possible problems. Regular updates will prevent you from bugs and decrease security risks.
Website Development Cost and Timeline
When you think of developing a website, your thoughts rotate around two main factors– price and time. Both depend largely on the size and scope of the project.
To outline the whole developing process, you can create a timeline for all stages. And placing milestones for your project is the best way to track your project. To make sure you keep up with the deadline.
The web development cost depends on several factors such as:
Hiring a dedicated web development team/Company
Nature & type of a website.
Quality of content.
The technology used to develop a website
Website testing via QA professionals.
Post-development website maintenance.
Third-Party API Integration