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Are you excited to get a website for your business and can not wait to launch it?
It is essential to remember that website development does not occur instantly. Before a website can go online, the creation and development of a website must be in place. It would be best to examine the site’s layout, programming, and testing.
You must ensure that it is compatible with mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. The website’s coding must be correct to load correctly in all web browsers. The complete website may not load properly even if a single application is incorrect.
You won’t regret it after reading this article about website development and its different stages.
Let’s dive in!
Is There Any Difference Between Website Development And Website Design?
Before we proceed to the website development stages, it is essential to be well aware of the difference between web designing and web development.
- Website Designing
Website designing is a graphic skill required for developing a website’s layout, usability, and visual appeal. A competent web designer must possess various artistic, graphical, and technological abilities.
- Website Development
In website development, a web developer creates and maintains the fundamental structure of a website. Using coding languages such as HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and Python, a web developer is entrusted with transforming the web design into a functional website.
Now, we move towards the stages of website development.
Stages of Website Development You Should Follow
The average website development project takes roughly eight weeks to complete; however, numerous factors might influence the schedule for your specific project, including:
- The difficulty of page layouts’
- The number of pages on your website, as well as the amount of customized database programming required
- The number of third-party integrations required
Website development requires a lot of effort to create the perfect site, and it is no easy process. Each phase has its own set of problems and duties, and you should fulfill them before going on to the next.
There are many steps involved in creating a website, and they are as follows:
Stage One: Planning for a Website
The website development timeline starts with planning a strategy or road map. In this stage, you decide what you wish to achieve with your website.
During this stage, you will plan out how many features your site will have, how it will look, how it will interact with people, and how much functionality you will require. It would be beneficial if you considered the content of each page.
Here is a list that will help you out with how to plan your website development:
- Establishing clear goals and objectives
- Team development
- Conduct a proper analysis of the situation and review the results.
- Make a list of tasks.
- Project description to the web team for development
Planning for website development entails incorporating all collected data into the process cycle; this requires dividing data into design, content, and programming components. After this, you may start drafting a plan for each squad.
Create technical standards for programmers to follow during this phase to plan features. You can also simplify the specifications to inform the design team of all design-required pages and features.
The development team may work on the system’s basic logic with a clean layout. The designers then have more time to polish the implemented design.
The development team will not be involved if the project is mostly design and content. Instead, the design and content team will collaborate to create structure and content for programmers.
Stage 2: Website Design
After deciding on a website’s architecture, it’s time to construct a website design. A design is a site layout that specifies how the designer will organize the various pages and what functionality he will include on each page.
Creating a website design is a crucial phase in website development because it allows designers to organize content in a way understandable to users and search engines. It also enables them to ensure that their design concepts are well-organized and visually appealing.
There are three types of website designs:
- Static Web Design
A static design works well when your site has few pages and no changing content. The data stays the same on a static site and doesn’t change over time. HTML, CSS, and Java make sites that don’t change. They are easy to make, and search engines can crawl them quickly.
- CMS or Dynamic Web Design
A dynamic website design can show constantly changing data; you must count on changing things. A few criteria update the site’s data automatically. Its design uses a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, etc.
- E-commerce Website
You need an eCommerce website with eye-catching graphics and banners if you sell items. A good eCommerce platform will make you take care of your website’s technical parts. You can build an eCommerce site on many different platforms, such as Opencart, Woocommerce, Zencart, Magento, OsCommerce, etc.
Stage 3: Development of Website
Once the website design is accepted, designers can begin developing templates or mockups of each page. These mockups are then utilized as a guide for website builders as they generate the actual HTML and CSS for each page, and this process is known as frontend development.
The following steps are essential during website development.
- Programming
When creating technically complicated web projects, the programming phase can begin before the design phase. By starting functional or system development concurrently with design, you can not only optimize the use of your team’s work but also reduce the overall development duration of the project.
If you’re using an existing system that doesn’t need any new logic, programming won’t start until the design phase of the implementation is done. The programming team won’t be involved in the development process until the client approves the final designs.
- Content Development
Once you submit the design and the client approves that, content work will begin. The main reason for the delay is to allow the content team to focus their writing efforts on filling the designs.
However, this does not mean the content team should be inactive while waiting for designs. They can use this time to investigate the topic matter they will be writing about and evaluate any significant competitors in the sector to ensure that they will produce and optimize the content following the industry tone and language.
Stage 4: Testing of Website
After building your site, it’s time to test it!
To ensure your website functions smoothly and users enjoy it, test it before going live.
Testing your site will help you ensure it’s ready for prime time. You can check out things like:
- How quickly does it load?
- Is it easy to read the font?
- Can you get to all of the pages?
- Does each link work?
- Does anything seem to be missing?
Most of the time, when a company builds a website, it performs several rounds of testing. Before the client tests the website, these rounds are responsible for catching all its significant bugs.
There are two ways to complete the Testing process:
- Design Testing
Design testing is done in the early stages of testing to make sure that the design is good. After you test the general plan, you can give it to the client for any last comments. Once you follow these comments, design testing becomes much more thorough. Experts check the Exact designs to ensure they match the original designs given to the programming team.
- Functional Testing
Functional testing can change the level of testing. Once the functionality is approved, the testing process goes more relaxed to simulate how real users will feel when they visit the site.
We’ve observed that less intense testing can uncover usability flaws that intense testing fails.
Stage 5: Lunching and Maintenance of Website
The final stage of website development is launch and maintenance. The website developer must be able to create an optimum plan to ensure that your website can continue to function. Many believe this is the most critical step in the process, especially for new businesses.
You must also update themes, clean database tables, and ensure plugins work with the latest theme.
How Much Will It Cost To Develop A Website
The average cost of building a website depends on a lot of things. Each business is different, and so are its website needs. For example, the factors that come into play when making a website for a company that does data analytics are very different from those that come into play when making a small site for blogging. If you are starting, you can use this free Website Cost Calculator tool to figure out how much it will cost to set up every part of your website.
| Type of website | Estimated design cost |
| Small business website (8 to 16 pages) | $2,000 to $9,000 |
| Large business website (25 to 75 pages) | $10,000 to $35,000 |
| E-commerce website Development (100 to 1,000 products) | $5,000 to $55,000 |
| Database website (20 to 2,000 pages) | $6,000 to $75,00 |
Factors That Affect Website Development Cost:
There are the following factors that affect website development costs:
- Domain Name
Domain names come first. Getting a new domain name for your website will usually cost you between $10 and $15 a year.
- How a Website Works
The main thing that affects how much a website costs is how it works. Adding functionality raises your site’s cost. Some website features are essential to your business, but others are just for fun and to improve the user experience.
- Website Management
Website management and maintenance are essential for your business because it keeps your site working and safe. Still, many people don’t plan their budgets to consider maintenance costs.
- Website Size
Website features and architecture complexity are not the only factors that affect web design costs. In many circumstances, website size is just as important.
Building a vast website costs far more than a tiny one. For instance, Building a 500-page e-commerce website takes time and effort, affecting web development costs. An essential website with a template and a few pages costs much less.
Can You Hire A Website Builder From A Web Design And Development Company?
Suppose you are looking for a web developer near me. In that case, you will know that businesses that routinely tackle complex projects can benefit tremendously from hiring a professional web design and development company. In addition to making advanced website designs, these companies can do many other things that aren’t related to web development, and you can face some difficulties even if you have done a web development course.
Pros:
- Agencies have the tools to work on complex projects.
- They have a package that includes designing a website, keeping it up to date, and SEO services.
- They can help you figure out how to market your business.
Cons
- Most small business owners can’t afford their prices.
- Projects take longer to finish.
- A small project will not be as crucial to an agency as it would be to a freelancer.
Summary
Having a website of your own is one of the most valuable things that you could have. It can help you build credibility, get more customers, and sell more.
You should be aware, however, that putting together a website is not quite as simple as counting to three and that there are a few fundamentals that you need to become familiar with before website development.
FAQ’s
- What is the difference between web design and web development?
Web designers ensure that the site appears simple and clean and that customers intuitively understand how to interact with it. They’re called UX designers. Web development is concerned with the programming behind the scenes to make a website function.
- Can a web developer be a web designer?
Yes, you can be both simultaneously. You can provide services for both roles simultaneously if you have done the website development course or researched through tutorials about their tools and procedures.
- What is the markup language for designing and developing websites?
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are two of the fundamental technologies used to create Web pages. HTML offers the website structure, whereas CSS provides the (visual and auditory) layout for a variety of devices.
- What should you avoid when developing a search-optimized website?
The most typical SEO errors to avoid in website building and how to correct them are as follows:
- Targeting the Incorrect Keywords
- Keyword Stuffing
- Using Irrelevant Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
- Publishing Low-Quality or Plagiarized Content
- Lacking Quality Backlinks.
- Slow Page Loading (Loading Time)
- Not Considering Mobile Compatibility
- Poor Site Structure
- Absence of Web Analytics
- How much does it cost to develop a website?
On average, though, building a website will cost you approximately $200 initially and $50 per month to maintain. This estimate is more significant if you hire a designer or developer; plan to pay roughly $6,000 and $1,000 yearly.
- What are the three types of web design?
Ecommerce, CMS, and static web design exist. Website design relies on the business kind and owner requirements. Each of these sites can be built and designed on different platforms with the help of pieces of software.