Thinking about creating a new or redesigned website? We've written a complete guide to the web design process to help.
Today, a website represents the center of a brand’s online reputation and its ability to win in the digital economy. It's a significant investment for any business and to get the highest return on your investment, you need to be well informed.
The lines between web design and web development have blurred, making it harder for business owners to understand what they really need out of a freelancer or agency. Navigating the web design process can be challenging for business owners that needs to redesign or invest in a new website. That's why we wrote the articles below –to give an inside look into the modern web design process.
You will learn what to expect each step of the way and the rationale behind everything that is done. It will give you the knowledge you need to hire a competent freelance web designer and build a great online presence for your business.
Phase 1: Discover
Why Your Business Website Has Never Been More Important
The internet is everywhere today. Consumers expect businesses to have an online presence that makes it easy for them to learn about your products or services and get in touch with you. In this post, we discuss why having a great website is critical for all businesses today.
Website Redesign: How to Know When It’s Time
Redesigning a website can be a costly endeavor –which is why you will want to make sure your website really needs it before making that investment. Once you read this blog, you will know whether or not it is time to redesign your website.
WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace: Which one should you use?
If you’ve decided that it’s time to create or redesign your business website, you need to choose what platform you would like to build it on. That will likely come down to the three big players in the space: WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. Which platform you choose will heavily influence the functionality and cost of your website for years to come –so it’s best if you start familiarizing yourself early on.
Ten Questions To Ask To Get The Most out of a Web Design Consultation
Properly vetting a freelancer is key for ensuring your web design project will work for you and deliver the results you want. But it can be hard to know what exactly you should ask and be looking for if you’ve never been involved in creating a website. This post will help you navigate the free consultations most freelancers offer and help you determine if they are a good fit for your project.
Web Designer vs Web Developer: Which One To Hire?
The line between web design and web development has blurred so much over the years that it can be difficult to determine what the difference between them is and which one you should hire for your project.
In this blog, we give you an overview of each role and explain what types of projects they are best for.
Phase 2: Plan
If you’ve made it to step two of the web design process, it means you’ve likely hired a freelancer to create a website for your business. However, design or development work can’t get started right away. The most successful projects always have a strong foundation of research and planning underpinning the whole process.
40 Web Design Terms To Know
Reading this post will quickly get you up to speed on all of the web design and development terms your freelancer will be using during the project. This is a great read, as it will help you communicate better and help you get your vision implemented quicker.
Client Onboarding: How It Gets Web Design Projects Off to a Great Start
We believe freelancers should always have an onboarding process in place for their clients. It gets the administrative work out of the way, establishes ground rules for the project and overall makes for a better working relationship. This post details how we onboard clients and how it improves the web design process.
5 Web Design Tools That Make Working with a Freelancer Easy
The web design process is very collaborative and it’s quite possible your freelancer will be working remotely. However, this is not a big deal and should not lead you to hire a web design agency. In this post, you will discover the tools we use to make working with our clients easy.
Website Goals: Why You Need To Set Them Before Designing
Before your freelancer can sit down and start sketching out the website, business goals for the website need to be established. This will influence the design direction and help your freelancer deliver what you want. In this post, we detail common website goals and what success looks like for them.
Essential Research To Do Before Starting a Web Design Project
Finally, the planning phase of the web design process wouldn’t be complete without research. In this post, we breakdown the research all freelancers should do before designing a website for their clients. This includes a SWOT and competitive analysis, a review of the business landscape, SEO research and much more.
Phase 3: Design
Finally, everyone’s favorite part of the web design process –the design phase. This is the part of the project where all the research and planning in the last phase gets put to good use. The freelancer will start creating the design and the client will have the opportunity to influence the project by providing feedback.
Website Design Inspiration: 5 Awesome Resources
Great websites are rarely built in a vacuum. We always recommend looking at other examples of websites to get inspiration and expose you to new ideas you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. This post details some of our favorite places to view examples of great web design.
The Web Design Brief: Why You Shouldn’t Start Designing Without One
The web design brief is a project management document that is used to ensure the client and freelancer are both on the same page. This helps identify and correct any misconceptions before the project starts –which could end up saving a lot of time. This post describes what we include in your web design briefs and how to use them to ensure your freelancer understands your business and project.
Why Creating Wireframes for Websites Are Necessary
Wireframes are the glue that holds the entire design phase together. Think of them like blueprints of a building, but for websites. They represent what the final version for the website will look like and allow the designer and freelancer to work together on the design.
Here we discuss why they are so important in helping to design a website and the tools we use to streamline the process.
Website Content: How to Figure Out What You Need
Design is what draws people into your site, but the content is what gets them to stay and convert. The design and content must complement one another to produce the business results you want.
Read this post to discover what types of content your website may need and how you can go about brainstorming and creating valuable content for your audience.
Web Design Best Practices: A Page by Page Guide
When it comes to web design, there is a lot of room for creativity and experimenting –but you should also be aware of some best practices to ensure a good user experience. In this post, we break down the best practices for the most popular types of web pages.
Phase 4: Develop
The development phase starts once the final design has been approved by the client. At this point in the project, all that is left to do is set up the domain or hosting and get the website coded.
There isn’t too much work on the client’s end other than approving the final live site, but we still wanted to provide you with plenty of information so you are up to speed.
Website Hosting for Businesses: What To Know
Website hosting is one of those technical website terms that sounds really complicated, but in reality, it isn’t. Choosing which hosting provider will impact your project costs, website speed, and reliability so its important to choose the right one. This blog gives you all the information you need to do just that.
How Does WordPress Work? A Quick Start Guide for Business Owners
WordPress is the internet’s most popular website builder and extremely user-friendly for all types of business owners. In this introduction post, we explain exactly what WordPress and why it is such a good platform to build your website with.
WordPress for Small Business: How It Makes Life Easy
Where the last post explained the basics of WordPress, this one dives into the specifics of how it can help your business grow for years to come. Discover how the cost, usability or functionality and strong development community for support make it the best website builder for most businesses.
How WordPress Speeds Up The Web Development Process
WordPress has become extremely popular because it makes building websites much more efficient. Learn how it does this and the benefits you gain from hiring a freelance web designer or developer that uses to build websites with WordPress.
Phase 5: Launch
If you want to get the most out of your website, it’s important to understand that the work doesn’t really stop once it’s launched.
To get the most return on investment, you need to maintain your website as time goes on, create content consistently, and always optimize for SEO. These blogs will show you how to do just that.
Website Checklist: 21 Things To Do Before Launching Your Site
At this point in the web design process, the website is fully developed and looks just like the final approved design. However, it can be tough to know when you are truly done. To help, we’ve created a checklist blog outlining everything you should review and double-check before launching your website.
How To Increase a Website’s Traffic with Digital Marketing
Unfortunately, just getting your website up and running is not enough to guarantee success. To bring in new traffic or visitors to your website, we’ve broken down the fundamental digital marketing tactics and strategies your business needs to execute.
Website Maintenance 101: What to Lookout For
Tech and design trends change so fast that if you don’t constantly optimize your website, it can look dated after just a few short years. Fortunately, maintaining your website doesn’t need to take up a huge chunk of your time. Read this post to discover what you need to watch out for as your website ages.
Local SEO: How to Get Your Website Found Online
SEO is the key to getting your website found on search engines like Google. Local SEO is just SEO but for the local market you serve –the biggest customer base for most small businesses. Optimizing for local SEO will allow your business to show up ahead of your competitors and be a massive competitive advantage.
