Building the perfect website is much like building or renovating your dream house – it always takes a lot longer than anticipated. At the end of the day, though, you’ll have a new, high-quality, lead-generating “dream” website.
Of course, perfection cannot be rushed, and when you consider that a typical website requires 10 steps from start to finish and will possibly involve a small team – you, a marketing strategist, a copywriter, a Web designer, a Web developer, and perhaps even a graphic designer – you can see why it’ll take more than a month.
In my first blog post, I covered steps 1 – 5, the creative phase of building a website. Here’s what to expect during phase 2, the more technical phase:
Step 6: Coding begins
The length of time it takes for the developer to code your site depends on how complex your site is. For example, if it’s a WordPress site (and most are), each plug-in (which adds functionality to your site) needs to be coded – and the developer needs to make sure the plug-ins all get along and are compatible.
Step 7: Content is added
Once the site is developed, content needs to be added in. Your copywriter will work with the designer and developer to make sure the content goes where it should and appears properly.
Step 8: Time to test the site
Before sharing the site, the developer will test all the functionality to make sure everything’s doing what it’s supposed to do in various browsers. Then the entire team will test the site. Any bugs or hiccups will be addressed by the developer.
Step 9: Final approval
Finally, you get the to see the website! After you look through it really quickly, oohing and aahing (or am I the only one who does that?), go back through and look closely at all of the content and design elements. Try out the buttons and links. Play around. Enjoy. Then give your developer the green light to launch it.
Step 10: 3-2-1 launch!
Your website goes live, and you can share it with the world – and start encouraging your clients to visit.
One thing I did not mention is that whoever is managing this project, whether it’s the marketing strategist, designer, or developer, will get in touch with you fairly often to ask questions, clarify things, and keep you apprised of progress.
Needless to say, every website project has its own timeline. I started working on my new website three months ago, and it just launched. If you’ve had one built from scratch, were there any additional steps build in to your experience?
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash