Are you worried and concerned about the website development process? You don’t know much about it, and don’t know what to expect. That’s okay, what you do need to know about working with a web design and development agency to build your website is that it’s a collaborative process. Sure, there are many page builders and free tools out there for you to build your website yourself. But, when you hire a website design agency you are hiring experts in the field who know the ins and outs. Nic and I are building websites every single day. We’re learning about changes in the industry, and we’re bringing that knowledge to you. When you hire us you’re hiring a team that can create a custom website that meets your needs.

Nic and Brianna talk about the Behind the Scenes of Creare Web Solution's Website Design Process

Our Typical Website Design Process

Don’t get scared by all the steps. We’re just breaking it down into tiny pieces, because doesn’t that make it seem a bit easier to attain? You can cross things off the list faster, and we always like doing that!

1. Define Your Project Goals:

Before you begin reaching out to anyone, you should start by clearly defining your project goals. What is the purpose of the website? What functionality do you need? Who are your target audiences and what are your key performance indicators (KPIs)? You’ll need to know this before getting started so we can identify the best layout for your website, and how to create the right user experience and lead flow.

2. Discovery and Requirement Gathering:

This ball is still in your court. You’ll need to work on gathering together all the images, video and text you’ll want to use for your website. You should find 5 websites you love. They can be in any industry, selling or promoting anything. To you they may all seem very different. To Brianna, she can figure out the commonalities and begin to learn what you’re looking for, even if you can’t verbalize it! You should also make notes of any functionality you’d like to have at this point. Are you selling products? Do you want to have a quiz? Do you want a detailed form? These pieces are all helpful to have together at the beginning.

Struggling with this part? Be sure to download our 5W’s of Website Design Workbook to help you get started!

3. Project Kick-off :

Now that you’ve gathered everything together, it’s time for us to put a proposal together for you. At this point in your website development process we’ll review the details you’ve provided us and put together a comprehensive proposal that lays out all the pieces and provides you with a timeline. Once you accept the proposal we’ll schedule a kick-off meeting to go through everything and ensure we’re on the same page.

4. Content Strategy:

Your action-item after our meeting will be to fully plan and create content for your website. This includes text, images, videos, and any other assets. You’ll have a general organization to follow and you’ll consider SEO and readability. This step is SO SO SO important to do before we start building your website! For most of our clients this is their bottleneck and the hardest work they have to do in the project. But, don’t let this overwhelm you, we have a document you can follow, and we’re here to help!

5. Website Design and Development:

We will start creating the design for your website right in Breakdance builder for WordPress based on your answers to the questionnaire and our discussions around it as well as the content you’ve provided. Typically we start with your home page design and then ask you to provide feedback and make revisions as necessary. Once that is updated we will lay out the additional pages and you will be able to review it all on our development server. What’s great about this is we are coding and designing at the same time, which saves us time and you money! This process usually takes about 1-2 weeks in total with back and forth between us and you, however, for smaller websites it can be much shorter!

6. SEO Integration:

Once all the pages are built, I go through and add keywords, load in custom page titles and meta tags and sometimes tweak your content to ensure it is SEO friendly.

7. Testing and Quality Assurance Review:

When we’re building we’re also testing in order to identify and fix any bugs, performance issues, or compatibility problems. At this point we’ll also ask you to review your website on all the devices you use and let us know any issues you see. The more eyes on it, the more thorough we are in catching any issues. Testing includes cross-browser, cross-device, and accessibility testing. We’ll also work with you to fill out all the details in your Termaggedon account to ensure your website policies are all set-up correctly.

8. Launch and Deployment:

Once the website is fully tested, approved, and ready for launch, we’ll discuss with you when you want it to go “live.”  No website ever gets launched without our client’s final OK. (I call this out because we’ve actually heard stories of other companies launching without the client knowing!) We’ll set up a plan and then handle the deployment, including DNS changes and server setup. During this process, Nic goes through an exhaustive list of launch steps to ensure that your site performs well. If you’re upgrading from an existing site, redirects are put in place to ensure there are no broken links. Nic ensures that Google Analytics is set up, login security via Cloudflare or Wordfence is in place, page caching in turned on, and nightly backups are configured and working. One last thing, Nic adds the site to Uptime Robot so he gets alerts if any downtime arises! Once everything is set we will let you know! At that point you will have a brand new, Creare designed-and-built website to share with the world!

9. User Training:

If you’ll be managing the website’s content, we will have a meeting where I can provide training on how to use the WordPress CMS, update content, and perform basic maintenance. We’ll record this meeting as well so you can go back and reference it in the future. 

10. Maintenance, Ongoing Support, Marketing and Promotion:

The last step of the website development process is getting your website working for you and continuing to work for you.

Since we host all our websites, and Nic is a perfectionist, he ensures your page load speeds are the fastest they possibly can be, including caching, and ensure the technical side of your website is SEO friendly. You can review our hosting packages and change packages at any point of time.  

Implementing marketing strategies to engage with your target audience and drive them to your new website is also important. We can provide you with a content marketing template to help get you started, or we can plan a working meeting where we can give you different ideas and create a custom plan to follow. Let’s get this website working as hard as you are!

Ready to Work with Us?

Hopefully this helped explain to you how working with our web design and development agency is a collaborative effort. We strive for clear communication and believe feedback throughout the entire process is essential.

When you’re starting your website project, be prepared to invest time and effort in the planning and design stages to ensure the final website aligns with your business goals and user expectations.

We are here to help you through this process, we’ve done it hundreds of times in the last 12+ years, and know how to guide you through it.

Please, reach out to us. Let’s take your website to the next level together!