Web Designing Process
Building a website consists of a process that most designers use. This process covers all the steps from deciding on a website to building it and putting them live.
Project Definition: The most critical step in the web design process is creating an accurate project definition. A project definition includes a project brief and a project plan. The client survey is used to gather the information needed to develop the project brief and plan.
Site Structure: Good web design requires solid site architecture based on the site’s goals and target audience established in the project brief. The deliverables from this phase are:
• Content Outline
• Site Diagram
• Page Description Diagrams
• Wireframes
Visual Design: "Structuring the site on paper before starting visual design is a critical step toward effective presentation of content to your intended audience."
Site Development: This is the time to actually build the site. There are two major steps during this stage:
• Confirm and Refine Technical/Functional Plan
• Build and Integrate the Site
Testing: The original project plan should always allocate time for formal testing. Ideally, you should identify a person to serve as the Quality Assurance Lead. This individual’s priority will be to create a realistic QA plan, manage the testing process, prioritize issues, insure that high priority issues are solved and conduct the final review and release of the site.
Launch the Site: Plan the best date to go live. Consider your current web site traffic patterns and attempt to launch in a way that minimizes downtime. Make sure that everyone on the team is on call for any challenges that might occur during launch. If possible, consider a soft launch (a quiet beta launch that allows you to confirm everything is up and running before the official launch date).
Conduct one final stage of quality assurance testing on the live site after it is fully in production to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Maintain Your Website: The best websites are changing all the time. The owners pay attention to them and add new content as well as keeping the existing content up-to-date. Plus, eventually you will probably want to do a redesign, to keep the design up-to-date as well.
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