5-Step Web Development Process

The hardest part of being an entrepreneur or business executive is taking actions on your vision. Many people don’t even know where to start and get distracted easily with a short attention span. That’s where a creative director comes in by putting your vision on paper. An experienced creative director can point you in the right direction by exploring example websites/templates, identifying the competitor landscape, content writing, and hand drawing an initial website layout. A creative director also helps build sitemap flow charts, set milestones, research media that needs to be collected and do live collaboration to speed up your creativity. If your website requirements are very large, a creative director may advise you to divide the website development into phases - starting with a minimal viable product (MVP). Talk to one of DWD’s creative directors and see how we can get you started.

Once you have consulted with your creative director, a graphic UX/UI designer will take all approved documentation from your creative director and wireframe the first version. Some graphic designers skip wire-framing and go straight to designing a full color concept of your website, starting with your home page. Once initial designs are complete, you and your graphic designer can make further changes until a 100% approved design has met your expectations. Please note that the web developer will also have to approve if the design, animation, feature can or cannot be done with code.

Once design has been approved by you, our creative director, graphic UX/UI designer, and web developer - the next step is to have the web developer start the coding process. Coding is usually done first on the web developer’s computer and then uploaded to a staging server for you to test. A website on staging server is needed for give you an opportunity to experience what your users will experience. Here, you will receive a live test link of the staging server to ensure the website is working as designed and catch any bugs not foreseen by our team. There’s a saying “The more eyes, the better.” You may need additional beta testers or a focus group to help make your users live experience the best.

At this point, you may be getting a feeling of euphoria on what you have just created. Our team at DWD also feels the same spending countless hours on building your dream. But as you know, websites take time to go viral. Luckily, DWD has a marketing team in place to spread your vision on the internet. Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo, all have web crawlers looking for opportunity to sell you Ads. The good news is, we know how to help you grow organically using the free tools these search engines provide. As a bonus, there’s social media and YouTube to help make your vision go even more viral. Whatever approach you may want to market your website, DWD is here to help you succeed.

Now that you have launched your website, understanding the behavior of your early adopters can determine the success of your business. A good analytics tool like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster, Semrush, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools can help determine stats such as what pages your users have visited, how much time did they spend, what devices they used, where they come from, how they found you, and give you a competitor analytics. It is also important for your website to instruct these search engines to tell them how to view your website like giving them specific keywords that you think is important for your customers to find your website. At DWD, we ensure your website gives you deep insights into your customer behavior to help your run your business more efficiently - saving you time and money.