Have you ever wondered what process Web Design Agencies use when designing your website? Or maybe you want to understand why a Custom Website costs as much as it does. In this post, we break down our web design process for Full Circle Design and look at the benefits of our designing your perfect website with us.
Research your online industry
Identify your website goals
Define your website scope
Design your website layout
Include your brand colours and content
Develop your website
Test your website
Launch your website
Maintain and Analyse
SEO and Grow
Whether you are a freelance web designer, a web design agency or a company taking on the task of building your very first website for your business, having a detailed web design process is a great way to make sure your goals and requirements are identified.
Step 1. Research your Online Industry
The first step in our web design process is research. Your goal here is to research your industry, who is performing best online and what your competition's online presence looks like. When researching your online market, we search for your competition using some market keywords that you would like to show up for. As an example, if Full Circle Design wants to show up for 'Web Design Tipperary' then we would pop over to Google search, type in Web Design Tipperary and see who shows up. We are looking for the top 3 ranking website agencies and see what they are doing great and what we think we could do better.
A pro tip here, when looking at competition websites, make sure you are reviewing their mobile websites as over 60% of website visitors view your website on a mobile device.
Step 2. Identify your Website Goals
Step number two is to look at the goals for your website. Why do you want to build the website and what do you want it to do? Say you have an existing website and maybe it's outdated or not performing for your business. Then an updated and more responsive design would help increase website visitors and attract new customers. Maybe you want to design a new website to showcase your latest projects or allow your customers to find you easier. Another possible goal is to collect customer information through website forms or by offering free information.
Whatever your website goals are, discussing them with your team or website designer (us) will help you to learn more about what you want to be featured on your website.
Step 3. Define your Website Scope
Once we have a clear understanding of your website goals it becomes a lot easier to create a scope for your website. A website scope helps to identify the requirements for your website so that we (your web design agency) know what to include in the website design stage. This also helps to discard what is not needed so there is no project creep or unnecessary work carried out. Having a great website scope in place allows a web designer to understand the project requirements and get started in designing your website.
Step 4. Design your Website Layout
This is the part where we take all our previously documented information such as your online market research, your goals and the website scope and start designing your website layout.
Taking your website goals and scope, we draw out what is needed for your website and then bring this in to create your homepage/landing page. From here we can create the journey your customers will take on your site which will also help to align your website layout. Think of it like a shop. You want to first entice your customers in the door, then show them your great products or services, and the benefits of shopping with you all with the end goal of getting customers to purchase from your business. The same goes for your website! Having a great website layout allows customers to navigate through your website with ease, find your products or services and contact you or buy directly from your website.
Pro tip - make sure you are designing for mobile and desktop. Having a great-looking site on desktop is good but if it isn't optimized for mobile then you could be missing out on over 60% of potential customers.
Step 5. Include your Brand Colour and Website Content
At this stage, you should have a great website layout and now it's time to 'make it pop'.
Stage 5 of the web design process is the fun part. Here to get to work by including brand colours, typography and website content. This is really where you get to see what your final site will look like. Adding logos, icons, design styles and anything else associated with your design system will make your website really stand out above your competition. We always work with our clients on this process, making sure we are hitting the mark and designing something that looks great for your business and works for your customers. If any design changes are needed, this is where we implement them. At Full Circle Design, we want to make sure you are 100% happy with our design before we touch a line of code.
Another quick pro tip here - your website helps your customers understand what you do, how you do it and how to contact you and overdesigning can confuse website users. Just because your site may win some sort of prize on awwwards doesn't mean it's something that will bring your clients business sales. A website should be user-friendly, and visually inviting and help to increase your business.
Step 6. Develop your Website
Stage 6 is where your website comes to life online. At Full Circle Design, we offer a full web design and development solution so you know your website is in safe hands. We offer everything from custom-coded developed sites to no-code websites built on our favourite platform Editor X.
We have built websites on WordPress before but with the number of plugins and website maintenance required we would recommend other website builders like Editor X. The reason behind this is we like our websites to perform fast and all our websites are A-rated by GT Metrix.
Once we are happy with a design and our clients approve our designs we take this into the development stage and create your responsive website that works great on desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile. Our development stage is a fast process and usually can take anywhere from 1 week to 1 month depending on the size of your website. (some websites such as e-commerce websites take longer to develop but we always share our expected timeline during our process.)
Step 7. Test your Website
Ok, so now we have your website designed, developed and looking great. Now it's time to test your site. Here we go through each web page, across all breakpoints (desktop to mobile) making sure that everything is working as expected. We always make sure that your website is ready for launch and buttons are directed to the right webpage, images are optimized, the text is aligned correctly and there isn't anything out of place. We also use this step as an opportunity to show you, our clients, your final website design for you to try it out for yourself.
Step 8. Launch your Website
It's launch time!
Launching your website isn't just a click of a button and it's done. There are a few steps involved for a successful launch such as marketing your new site and making sure it is showing up on search engines. When your website is live our first call to action is to connect it with search engines like Google and Bing. This is called indexing. Indexing your website correctly allows search engines to crawl your website, check out what content is on your website and begin to rank it for your search terms or keywords. Once your website is indexed, it does take time to be recognized but it will start to rise up those rankings each month.
Our next call to action is to market your website. Posting on social media, and following up with existing customers through email marketing are both great ways to promote and advertise your newly designed website. Not only is this a great way to attract new customers but it's also a great way to allow existing customers a way to see what other products or services you offer and help to bring in new business.
Step 9. Maintain and Analyse
Your website is live and you are already seeing some great traffic coming on to your website. This is where we make sure it stays like that. A website that isn't correctly maintained is like a shop with no shopkeeper. Your customers are coming on to your website and may be trying to contact you through your website forms but are being left on read. Or maybe there is an update needed for your website platform that if not done correctly could slow down your website. This is where we come in. Our Website Maintenance and Management makes sure your site stays up to date, performs fast and remains responsive across all devices. We also track and analyse your website to see how each web page is performing and update your website content to make sure your customers are getting the best user experience available.
Step 10. SEO and Grow
You want to increase your customers online, don't you?
A website is a 24/7 marketing tool. It allows you to put your best foot forward online and show your expertise in your industry and on top of that, it doesn't close at 5 pm. Showing up for your customers is vital and having a great SEO (search engine optimization) campaign in place is the perfect place to start. Once we have designed and developed your website, we want to help you to show up for your ideal customers. At Full Circle Design, we offer competitive SEO and Google Business Management solutions to help businesses of all sizes increase their online presence and drive your ideal customers to your website. We understand what it takes to get your website to show up on search engines. We optimize your website and create a strategy to improve your search engine ranking organically and bring visitors to your website. If you are a small business offering local services or a large corporation, our SEO services are great solutions to increase your search engine rankings and your sales.
Interested in our Website Design, Website Management or SEO services?
We are happy to answer all your questions and help you to increase your online business and show up for your ideal customers. To get in touch with us just click the button below.
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