The Basic Steps of Building a Business Website

Building a website is not just about creating web pages that provide all the correct information. The design must be easy to navigate. It must be visually compelling. It needs to load to the browser quickly and be of a responsive design. It needs to work easily on PC’s, Tablets, Phones, Mac’s, iOS, Android, all devices, operating systems, and browsers. The copy writing and design needs to be optimized to work within the rules of SEO for your potential customers to find your site when they search from Google or any of the other web search tools. There is way more to business web design than meets the eye.

The process of creating a website that attracts potential customers and converts them to customers involves multiple steps of clear conscious design, content development and execution. There are four primary steps. The creative brief, the Information and architecture phase, copywriting, and content creation, and finally coding and development. Interspersed between all this is the technical environment for hosting, search engine optimization, code updates and platform website backups. The story doesn’t end there because for this to work overtime, changes will come so we must plan for them.

The Creative Brief is the first step in the process and involves steps to define the “Buyer Persona” or who is your customer. It connects your objectives with your creative strategies and drives the content creation process. It aligns your expectations with clear, measurable goals. This step is critical to developing a marketing and advertising strategy that converts potential customers into paying customers.

Information & Architecture is the second step. For projects of this nature this is definition of all pages, sections, and functionality. Header, Footer and page by page goals and structure planning. It’s like the blueprint when you go to build a house or any physical structure. It defines the beginning and the end point of the design/build process.

Copywriting and Content Creation is the third step. Writing the words for the website you might think is an easy straight forward process and it is mostly, but choosing the correct “Key Words” and repeating them the correct number of times for search engine optimization complicates the process. Having the right word count also affects SEO. How it is formatted affects bounce rates. Not only that but the web is a visual medium, so including great visual imagery is of importance. Everything counts toward an effective website.

Coding and Development is the last primary stage of website creation. Here visual imagery is optimized for web deployment. Code and HTML is written in a responsive design so the content loads quickly and is compatible with all browsers and devices. Contact form building and interactive elements are coded and tested. This is where professional developers will make a clear difference in what is delivered versus what the average person using one of the WYSIWIG tools can deliver. We highly recommend working with someone who knows what they are doing for this stage.