When you (or your company) are going to make a website for the first time there are usually some important questions arise: what to do, in what sequence and how? Which web designer or web design studio you should choose? What is the right process of website development? You’d better have a plan at first to follow and get the desired result. So ask yourself a first question: what do you want to get?

1. Create website conception

Imagine that your website is ready. What is its structure? What content it has? What is the general impression of visitor who visits your site for the first time? What he/she should think or feel? Could it be similar to some well-known sites?

Don’t be afraid to answer these questions in simple language without use of special terms. The main point you should describe as detailed as possible the result you are looking for.

Example: The website visitor should feel reliability, stability. The content should include short description of our market position, pricing policy, contact information and product catalogue. Site visitor should quickly find order form link and fill in minimum fields to send it to us.

2. Set website goal

Be honest to yourself! What for does your company need a website? If it’s important for you that your partners would give you very positive feedback about its design then say it frankly. But maybe you plan to move back online competitors by providing more useful service? Or you are going to create some kind of virtual office to work easy with partners and clients from different regions?

Set the only one goal for the project to succeed and don’t be mistaken that with help of one particular website you can resolve all your problems. If you are going to create branding website with impressive graphic and animation it could hardly be effective as internet shop or news portal.

It’s important. You goal should be measurable. That means any particular number of visitors, concrete amount of money earned with site help, etc.

3. Define website target audience

It’s very important for you to understand for whom you create website and to know your potential visitors. If you can imagine your target audience quite well describe it in details.

Are your potential site visitors’ men or women? What is their social status? Where do they work and spend free time? What are their interests? Just imagine one typical site visitor and tell about him/her.

Example: A young man 26-30 years old, educated, who is interested in career. He is healthy, likes to spend free time in night clubs and spend his vacation in Europe.
A young woman 30-40 years old lives in small town with children. She is interested in improvement of her house.

4. Get to know web development process

You should understand in general what is happening on the developer’s side and how they produce the ready website after you give them your requirements and pay the money.

The main three circumstances to allow your website appear on the web.

1. The website itself as a combination of certain files and services should be ready
2. It should be uploaded to some hosting account to access it from any place in the world
3. The website should have it own domain name

As a rule the website developer could help you with domain name registration and hosting so let’s consider web development process itself.

If your web developer isn’t a single person but a web studio it means that your site will be developed by several people.

First of all, there is project manager which will discuss and conform to you details of the project. He will set tasks for designers and programmers, control everyone to follow the timeline and will be mediator between other stuff and you.

The next one is the content manager who is responsible for every photo, illustration and text information on the site. You could provide ready content or order its production for web design studio.

After content and structure of main page and subpages are described (in this work web GUI designer could be involved) web designer start to work. Web designer draw one or several sketches of site design. After design approval web coder translate web design from image to html language understandable by web browsers.

After all templates are coded programmer integrate design, required modules and content management system. He makes easy for you as the site owner to update site content.

Afterwards site is tested first on local server and then on web hosting to get rid of all possible bugs and errors.

so, now you can define your wishes for individual workers and prepare necessary information or questions for project manager.

5. Choose web design studio

Let’s suppose that you already have a list of web design studios or freelancers to choose from. As a rule they ask you to fill in a standard questionnaire to get necessary information. Learn this document. Is it overloaded with time consuming questions which hardly are useful for your website development? Do you understand clearly questions, terms? Is it easy to get help from project manager?

After getting the necessary information from you, the web design studio tells you the budget and time of your project. But don’t choose your website developer only on basis of price/time ratio. Ask yourself, with whom you found mutual understanding? Who is eager to consider your opinion? Who asked you more questions, spoke with you in simple language and promptly respond to your wishes?

Look through web designers’ portfolios again to make sure you like their works’ level and style. Are you sure that chosen developer could reach goal and tasks set by you? Your choice could be rather expensive but your main goal is to resolve an issue but not save the money.

6. Learn project documentation

Website development starts with writing project documentation. It could include from 10 up to 100 pages (if it’s a big project). Be ready to carefully look through all given documentation, find out and make clear all incomprehensible for you details and sign them only afterward. The writing of such documentation costs some money and its structure and details should prove web developer’s level and proficiency. So don’t try to save money by skipping this step.

Your website will be developed according project documentation only if you sign it (without any future improvements or corrections from your side). If you have project documentation you could change your mind later and choose another web design studio as your website developer.

7. Choose supervision methods

The main and almost single method of website development process control is checking up all its steps to previously approved plan. Make sure you and website developer understand each other fine as well as specific terms and ideas. Try to abstract from your vision since in most cases you do not belongs to the target audience of your site. Ask questions, ask for details if you don’t understand something but not overdo. Your main goal is not become a web developer but make sure you’ll get the desired result on time.

8. Stick to right actions sequence

It’s not a good idea to approve a final design when you don’t have content. You can’t write project documentation if you didn’t define site conception, goals and target audience. Otherwise you would spend much more time on the project or won’t get the desired result at all and just waste your money.

Spend more time at first on planning and don’t change task in the process since it will be completely different website. Make sure one of your company’s employees is responsible for providing all required information for developer or can answer their questions. Keep to the agreement and terms of the contract.

9. Prove that you’ve reached your goal

It’s easy if you followed your plan and stated measurable goals for your website. After website launch you can track visitor’s number, their behavior on site and financial effect. Make sure to control that everything works smoothly.

10. Expand your website further

To improve your site and make it more efficient you should post fresh and interesting content. Someone have to update and support your site regularly, watch its availability and control results.