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Whether we are talking about a corporate website that simply presents the company and its activities or whether we are talking about an eCommerce platform for online sales, the steps are numerous and the commitment of different stakeholders is essential to guarantee the success of this tool and to obtain a site that reflects your image.
Through this article, you will be able to discover the different steps to be taken when creating a website, from strategic thinking to putting the site online.
1. Expression of your needs
During our meeting, you will have to express your needs through the most complete briefing possible so we can lay the right fondations from the start. This stage is usually prepared upfront within the marketing department of your company where the objectives are set.
Tell us about your company, its structure, its values. Tell us about your competitors, your customers and their needs. Show us designs or list us websites that you like or that you want to compete with. If you already have a website, remember to analyze the current results (for example the most visited pages), to let us know what works well or, on the contrary, what you absolutely want to change.
Don't forget to let us know the deadline of the project and your budget, so we can plan your project accordingly and make sure we will be able to match both criterias.
All these elements can be communicated to us in a specification document. Even if it is a bit time consuming to write, it is very important at this stage of the project development because, thanks to it, no detail will be left to chance. It can contain many things:
- Your graphic charter, if you have one
- Your technical constraints if any
- The detail of the different functionalities you would like to have (if you have a precise idea) or to be taken from your current site.
- The structure of the different pages, if you have already established it totally or partially
- All the behaviors if you have an overview on them (action of such a button, such a link, scrolling behaviors, etc.)
Based on an exhaustive specification document, we'll avoid misunderstandings and rounds trips during the execution of your project. If you need help to draft this document, our team will off course be happy to assist you !
2. Reflection, analysis
Following the needs expressed in the previous step, we will be able to translate or refine these into functionalities that will help build the site, and draft you an offer around which we will exchange. Once the budget is approved, we'll define a planning and when these two subjects are validated, we'll start developing your project.
3. Site Tree
After the strategy and analysis steps comes the phase of creating the tree structure of the site. Using Wireframes (raw structure without the design layer), you will be offered a structure of the site with the different pages, the elements that make up these pages and the interconnections between them.
4. Content delivery
The cards are now in your hands. Whether you write the content internally or entrust this task to an external service provider, it is now a question of providing us with the content corresponding to the tree structure of the site validated by you.
In practice, it is possible that for some reason you do not have the final content at this stage. In this case, the text content of the designs will be filled with fake texts (the famous Lorem Ipsum). Nevertheless, the ideal remains to provide us with the content before the design phase so that the design is developed around your content...
5. Design creation
The tree structure of the site is validated, your contents are written? Yes! Now it's time to add the design layer to your project. It is important that the imagined graphics stick to the vision and image of your company, and therefore to your audience. After a first proposal submitted by the agency, a collaborative tool like MarvelApp or Invision will allow us to discuss our propositions until we reach a final version.
6. Site Development
Once the designs have been validated, they are sent to the development team. The designs are accompanied by the specifications which will support the non-perceptible functionalities on the designs.
Our Back-end and Front-end developers will work together to have a functional site on the one hand, and on the other hand to have a site that sticks to the previously validated designs.
A real team work made of branches, lines of code and debugs, testing and validation.
7. Testing and client validation
Once the development of the site is finished, it is first tested internally by the team, on different browsers and different devices (this is called Cross Browser testing).
The URL of the staging (test) site is then sent to you so you can check all the developments, under conditions similar to the future production site. You can then give us feedback on our work and on any inconsistencies you may have discovered during your testing.
8. Feedback round
The feedback received will allow us to fix any small bugs raised or small last minute requests. This step can be the subject to one or more round trips with you, until total validation of the entire site.
At the same time, assuming that the feedback received does not require any new developments that goes beyond the specifications, it is also at this stage that access to the backoffice is given to you so that you can go and make small content changes, or translate the site into another language according to what was agreed on earlier.
9. Go Live !
Once everything is validated on the test site, we can move on to the long-awaited stage of production. This step roughly consists of duplicating the test site via a few technical manipulations to the production environment.
Once everything is settled on our side, your new website is available to the general public. Congratulation !
10. Maintenance and optimization
So is it over? Not really.
It is now up to you to maintain your new communication tool! Fill it with content, add or modify the texts and images whenever needed.
Analyze the data via your analytical tool to check that your objectives are achieved.
Your site will therefore be constantly evolving. You may need new pages, adjust existing pages, develop new features.
In short, our relationship is made to last!
You have a project ? Let's talk about it together over a coffee!
