Unlock the 9 Steps of Web Design Process [Blueprint 2020]

Ready to unlock my 9 steps of Web Design Process in 2020?

Designing a Website to serve any organization goal is not too vast that many say. It is possible with the right Web Design Process to deliver quality websites for clients. So if you want to align your strategy with the goal of website purpose, you need to work on the Web Design Process steps. 

I am going to explain my 9 Web Design Process Model. This Process helped me to work better in 2020. If you are a Web Designer or a Business owner looking for your own site to complete company goals, this guide will help to install the right Framework in your mind. 

So If You are looking to organize your thoughts and Designing Process, this guide will make a serious impact in your Web Design Journey.

So let’s Dive into understanding the Web Development Process from start to end.

01. Define The Goal

If You are trying to accomplish a Web Design task without understanding the goal, let me see your design future. (Just Kidding). So importantly you need to understand the goal of the website, what is the main purpose of the website? Once you get it, the focus of design work will go clear. Without a definition of the client’s goal, it’s like building a Home instead of Dream Home.

CHECK ALSO: A GUIDE ON E-COMMERCE WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

Sometimes a client can’t explain the vision in their mind, but you can catch all the things coming from their mind. These are some basic question to determine clients goal:

• What is Organization about?
• Where is the office located?
• Do You want more people to visit your website?
• Do You want to sell Your Product or Service on the Website?
• Hey, Do you want to Publish Newsletter weekly or Monthly?
• Or maybe you want to announce something Important on the website?
• Is there any specific that you want to show on the website?

Now when you merge all the discussion between you and client, you may finalize to say “ You want to website to promote your service through your city, it is to increase sale”

For Example: I figure out that You want a Business Website to Promote your “Cleaning Service” in Pune City. Apart from this, you also want to publish Weekly Contents related to “Cleaning Service”. 

02. Organize the concept and Materials

Once You understand the goal, you can easily develop a website designing concepts. You can ensure what are the ideal pages needed to create for website development or  what are the features necessary to meet the website goal.

There is a set of standard and general Web Pages for type of Small-Medium Business. For example: Home Page, About, Service and Contact. Some other pages like FAQ Page, Product Page, Testimonial Page and so on. It’s all depending on the goal and purpose of the website. 

On the other hand some legal pages are also required. For example Privacy Policy, Terms and Condition etc. 

Features and functionality are the important key elements in Website Design. However every website requirement calls its own set of functionality that meet the goal. Here is the list of features and functionality to provide rich results in any website.

SEO Optimized: one of the necessary keys of success in terms of search engine ranking factors.

Note: Every Pages on a website can not be standardized in terms of SEO. however finding Keyword opportunities can be optimized for some period (and that also depend on the nature of Business).

Blog Page (Articles, Newsletter Publishing): Blogging is something that can increase Your Brand awareness and also help to boost sales of a company. Where we can not standardized optimization of general Pages (Home, About etc), a Blog page with various types of contents (related to Niche) can help to gain better visibility in search engines.

Website security at Various levels:  This is important to protect your website from unauthorized entry from comment on Blog Post, submitting Form, Newsletter subscription or any Brute force attack.

Website Performance: To ensure analytics of the entire website. You can check which page is performing well and opportunity to fix some others.

Website Backup: it allows you to take backup with your own. 

Social Auto-Sharing: with the help of this feature, you don’t need to work manually to share your contents on social Media, whether it is a blog post or Announcement. Social Sharing features share all the contents on your integrated social accounts once you hit Publish on your website. Apart from this a bunch of social share buttons also appear on your each post (Customizable) to give freedom to share by your website visitors.

Anti-Spam Contact Form & Subscribe Feature: An Anti-spam contact form allows your website visitors (only Human) to connect quickly. You get a notification on your mobile once the visitors hit Submit. Anti-spam contact Form protects your site from unauthorized entry.

And a Newsletter Subscribe features give opportunity to your website visitors. They can receive occasionally newsletter or announcement directly into their inbox once they subscribe to your newsletter.

03. Sitemap or wire-framing

Sitemap of Wire-framing is one of the best ways to see your concept of website Development. You can see how Web Pages are related to each other. How the design flows and the arrangement of all web pages along with entire contents like Words, Headlines, Images etc. to take your wire-framing on the next level, don’t hesitate to take some inspiration. Even i spend tons of hours to find some awesome inspiration. The truth is you can not imagine or visualize design till finding some inspiration. Dribbble, Awwwards are some of the ideal resources where you can reach for some quality design inspiration.

04. Website content creation

First Remember! Only design is not a part of serving website goals, it is only 50%. You need to create quality content for each web page. Quality copy persuades your audience to take action gently. 

And the second, creating quality content for SEO is also a necessary part of making your website visible in search engines. So improve your contents to rank on Google or Yahoo. Many free tools available to find Keywords and help to write better contents for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Google Keyword Planner is one of best options available for free. 

05. Branding or visual Elements

If You want to take your Web Design Process on wow level and an appreciation from your Loyal clients, Just make them feel with visual elements. Consistency of Font, Color, Images or illustration in Website Development Process give super Branding. Make sure that every design element whether that is Site Logo, Headline, Paragraphs, Images of CTAs Buttons should be consistent and make people feel.

06. Final Design and Development

Now it’s time to convert all those visuals, wireframing into actual Design. Once you are done putting all visual elements, contents in place, make sure to recheck your site against your visual/Branding Planning and wireframing. To ensure everything in a web design process, try to follow a check sheet. A check sheet contains all required number of pages, Color information, Images, illustration and so on. You can tick the check sheet for each time when you completed your Job on the web page.

07. Getting Feedback

Many Developers and Designers don’t think of this much to get some feedback from real people or communities. I Think you need to get some real, honest and Instant feedback on your crafts.a simple method is to publish is just a snapshot of design on social Media Developer community. The thing is if you are able to question/Feedback in the right way, I am sure you will get quality feedback and also some suggestions. For example if you are developing a website to promote/sale online courses, so you can simply ask like this:

“The Idea of Developing this website is to promote and sell quality online courses, do you think this design actually fits the goal?”

08. Testing and Validation

Getting feedback from communities or social media work only 25%. And this is the reason why I recommend for Professional testing. You can adapt to the A/B Test with some free tools like Optimizely. And if your design is an eCommerce Website, take help of usertesting.com

09. Launch and Tweak

Launch the Crafted website live. Sometimes you need formal approval when working on a client project.once you launch your Design Website let’s repeat the GETTING FEEDBACK Process. Gently ask people to review and share honest and real feedback on work. If you would like to Join some Professional community, i will suggest to go sign up on Dribbble and awwwards. These two platforms are full of Inspiration and loyal Professional. 

PRO TIPS: Remember Finally when your website is live, you need to keep an eye on website Performance. So keep track of matrices that are important to you. Your data/matrix should be aligned with your original goal that you visualized when you developed the design concept itself.