Web Development Process – Planning
When you look at the web development process as a whole most of the time should be spent during the website planning phase. After you have defined your objectives, determined your target market, studied your online competition, and discussed all this information with the stakeholder’s within your organization, you will then want to put together the website architecture document. This document will outline all the web pages within your website and the navigation scheme. Only after all these tasks are completed should you contact a web designer to discuss your project, this will allow the web designer to really understand the best way to approach your project. Preparing this information in advance of contacting a web designer will also allow you to get the most accurate quote, and the quotes will likely be lower because there are less unknowns for the web designer.
Immediately after finalizing your website architecture document you should begin writing the first draft of your website copy. We always recommend that you the business owner write the first draft because you know your industry and target market than any web developer. We still recommend having that copy edited by a professional copywriter who can usually help you effectively communicate your message in as few words as possible. It’s important to keep your website copy brief and to the point because you website visitors don’t want to have to wade through a bunch of words to get the information they need. Hopefully your copywriter has internet marketing skills as well, but if not you will want to have an internet marketing professional review your website copy to make sure it’s search engine friendly. This individual will ensure that your keywords are used in the appropriate places such as the page title, meta tags, Alt tags, H1 tags, and that you have at least considered utilizing some of the last online marketing techniques such as podcasts, blogs, and social media.
We can’t emphasize enough the importance of planning your website before actually beginning the development. A good plan will almost certainly save you 10-30% on web design and development costs, as well as eliminate many headaches and potentially the launch of your new website.