Website development is essential to any merchant striving to start selling online. Accordingly, 47% of shoppers will look at a company’s website before placing an order. However, behind the beautiful websites that sparkle on the internet is a daunting web development life cycle that includes various distinct stages.
If you want to hire a web development business, you should have an initial idea for the project. Understanding the steps in building a website from scratch will make interacting with a service provider easier. This article will cover the 8 stages of the web development life cycle and provide valuable tips for each.
What Is The Web Development Life Cycle?
The web development life cycle encompasses all phases of website creation, from concept to coding and design to installation and maintenance. It might range from making a straightforward website to establishing a complex web application or social network.
A guideline will point you in the proper direction for developers or project managers to ensure minimal errors and superior results.
8 Must-have Steps In A Web Development Life Cycle
Stage 1: Research and Gather Information
Many individuals would ignore this critical phase in the web development process. Big mistake!
To ensure that your website development is on the right track, conduct research and obtain all the relevant data about your project and your client. Then undertake niche market research to identify the target audience for the product or service of your website.
It is critical to visualize the kinds of people who will use your website during this stage. You must carry out extensive research on them, including their age, gender, interests, and requirements.
If you skip this stage, the remaining phases will be ineffective and fail to meet the optimum results.
What should you do at this step?
Define the website’s purpose:
- Define the vision and mission of your website: what your website is about and what it has.
- The type of website you desire: will it be an informative, commercial, or service website? This will determine your website’s content and design. If your website is about selling things, prioritize eye-catching, sharp photographs and a website with an appealing design.
- The target audience: who is your website for, and who are the customers you wish to attract.
- Scope of your project: how much money do you intend to invest in web development?
Clarify your requirements for the website:
- Look and feel of your website: How do you want your website to look (minimalist, classy, colorful, retro, vintage, etc.)?
- Necessary features: What functions do you want your website to have? It depends on the website’s objective. E-commerce functionalities are essential when designing a sales website.
What to remember?
- Online surveys, product trials, and face-to-face interviews are the best ways to analyze your target customers.
- The product will answer the question of who your target market is. If you intend to sell premium dog and cat food, your target audience will undoubtedly be pet owners with high incomes.
- Product differentiation is vital for sales sites. It allows you to stand out and spark users’ attention.
Stage 2: Plan a web development strategy
The planning phase will begin after a thorough survey. This phase entails planning all website areas, from the sitemap to the design to the content.
What should you do at this step?
Before undertaking this phase, you must select the software development technology and method. Following that, you must strategize.
- Create a sitemap: a list of pages, their fundamental areas, other files, and their subdivisions on the website. This map supports search engines in finding, crawling, and indexing your website’s content.
- Determine which pages your website will have: the home page, landing page, checkout page, product page, and so on.
- Decide on the website content: decide what problem the website will solve and what information will be delivered to customers.
What to remember?
- When building a sitemap, keep the target audience in mind. For customers to surf your site, you need a user interface that is not just straightforward but also enjoyable and engaging. A phone-friendly UI, in particular, should be your top priority.
- A welcome/landing page will help your website become more alluring. From the first time they visit the website, an eye-catching, one-of-a-kind welcome page will help you gain the sympathies of users.
- Including a blog on your website will make it more helpful and informative. It will help your website achieve higher SEO rankings since Google rewards websites that provide valuable content.
- In addition, stunning photographs, vivid videos, and fantastic banners will be a significant plus to your website.
Stage 3: Design the layout of the website
The design stage is building the layout of the website. It is the interface that users can see when they visit your website. Web design is your company’s first impression on customers.
An excellent first impression indicates that customers will feel engaged and spend more time on your website.
What should you do at this step?
You and your design team will collaborate to finalize design concepts for your website. This step aims to create a one-of-a-kind, creative, and appealing website design.
Accordingly, the developer will build a website layout, either a graphic sketch or a realistic graphic design based on your specifications. It goes over to the allocation of buttons, tabs, menus, navigation, banners, CTA buttons, essential functions, and pick color themes, typography, and visuals.
It all comes down to optimizing the website’s user experience. A superb website design may give a pleasant, intuitive, and captivating experience.
What to remember?
- Create a dynamic website that caters to your target clients’ needs and wants.
- A website’s color palette will enhance the customer experience. Colors can evoke various feelings; for example, green often has a relaxing and nature-oriented effect, whereas black conveys a sense of elegance and luxury. As a result, a suitable combination can be beneficial in design.
- Design tools include Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Figma, Sketch.
Stage 4: Implement and Develop Website
The next step in the web development life cycle is implementation and development. Following the completion of your website design, it will be the work of web developers. Web developers will deal with your website’s backend and frontend. It is also time to start brainstorming ideas for your web content.
What should you know?
Frontend coding
Front-end coding is the development of your website’s interface. It comprises everything visitors will see on your website, including colors, buttons, navigation menus, and visuals.
All the ideas from the design stage will be turned into motion animations, visual effects, and interactive buttons. And website features will be integrated during the frontend development process.
A developer’s goal is to create an easy-to-use and user-friendly web frontend.
Backend coding
The backend of a website is the part that is always running in the background, delivering functionality and experience to users. Backend development often entails writing code for the server, the application, and the database. Simply put, the code built by backend developers is responsible for transmitting database information to the browser.
What should you do in this step?
Generate content for your website:
- The creation of content is critical for the website. No beautiful web design can help you if you can’t communicate well with customers.
- It includes CTA messages and information about your company, products, or services. Furthermore, adding a catchy headline, photos, and short videos will make your website more enticing.
- You should prepare website content before/during the development stage.
What to remember?
- Spelling and grammar are two crucial aspects while crafting website content. Spelling and grammar mistakes may make customers feel that you’re unprofessional and less reliable.
- Constantly innovating content and assuring its usability is the best method to keep loyal customers. If you’re stuck for ideas or want to test how interesting your title is, utilize HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator và Sharethrough Headline Analyzer.
- Integrating Progressive Web App technology is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to make your website interface mobile-friendly.
Stage 5: Optimize and double-check your website
After the backend and frontend development stage is finished, the following step is to optimize and test the website. At this step, you should consider optimized site performance and SEO ranking.
What should you do in this step?
Thoroughly test your website to ensure that it works smoothly on the webserver. You should test the user interface to ensure that the effects, animations, buttons, and functions run smoothly.
What to remember?
- Carefully evaluate the interface to verify that it displays correctly on all devices and platforms, and make adjustments if needed.
- You can use the Lighthouse tool to test the loading site of your web since this will affect the SEO rankings.
Stage 6: Go live with your brand new website
It is time to launch your website after rigorously testing and optimizing it. At this stage, the web developer will upload the website to your server, after which it will be entirely ready for release.
What should you do in this step?
Choose a day to go live (and announce the time beforehand on different channels). Double-check that your new site’s performance several times after launching, and test all pages. Fix any issue immediately when it occurs.
What to remember?
In the first few days, it’s important to keep a close eye on your website. You’d need to assist customers in case they run into trouble with the new site.
Stage 7: Promote your website
Ingenious and targeted marketing strategies allow you to raise awareness and grab your customers’ attention. Using social media along with special discounts is a viable strategy for drawing more visitors to your website.
What should you do in this step?
- Give customers spoilers about the site’s best features and promotion programs that would take place.
- Share useful content from your website’s blog to encourage them to visit.
What to remember?
You should start building expectations a few weeks before and following the official launch. Ensure customers are getting familiar with the new web even before it’s live.
Stage 8: Upkeep and update
The web development life cycle does not end with the launch of your new website. It’s crucial to maintain and update your website regularly.
What should you do in this step?
Check your site’s performance and quality on a consistent schedule by evaluating its content, design, and traffic. As a result, you can ask the site developer for upgrades and additional features.
What to remember?
- Regular maintenance and upgrades will keep your website in optimal condition and engaging.
- Update new content to keep your website at the top of the search engine search result.
Begin Your Web Development Right Away!
Website development is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Each stage in the web development life cycle is critical, and no processes should be neglected. Otherwise, the created website will fail to meet your expectations.
There is no ideal time than the present to undertake web development for your business. Almost one-third of small companies boost revenues through their website.
So start your web development today to ensure that you are running like a prospective company.
Website building empowers your company in establishing a reputation, brand identity, and long-term relationships with its clients.
Select a trustworthy provider for your website development
A website will support you in various ways, and it will be far more valuable if professionally built.
Thereby, you should work with a reputable website developer if you want a website that looks and operates smoothly. Tigren is one of the top web development agencies to work with. We can empower you to create a high-quality, high-performance website at a minimal cost.
With over ten years of experience in e-commerce website development and has released hundreds of e-commerce sites successfully, we will help you have a unique website to drive conversions in the best way.
Contact us today to find out how we can help your company flourish!
