Web Design + Build process: How it works

What happens once you’ve decided you would like to work together?

1. Firstly, tell me all about your project!

To help me get a better idea of what your project and/or business are all about, and to fully understand your new website goals and requirements, I ask you to download and complete my Creative Brief form. Please complete as many fields as possible, and if there is anything you would like to note/add, please pop it in the form wherever you feel relevant.

Download my Website Creative Brief here.   Need a Logo too? Download my Website & Logo Creative Brief instead.

2. Next, I review your Design Brief and develop a timeline

Based on your new website requirements, I develop a timeline for the project which I feel allows a suitable amount of time, and allow us to meet any launch date / milestone requirements.

3.   The Design process starts!

Based on your responses to the Creative Brief, coupled with any creative ideas I have for how to make your website really stand out, I develop an initial design concept for your website home page.

The concept is emailed through to you for review; Please take your time to review the design and layout of the concept, and provide any feedback / changes you might like to see applied to the design in Round 2. Please don’t worry too much about the copy used at this stage. I like to use dummy text in my design concepts to illustrate how something might look on the screen, without the need to have any actual text ready to go.

We might go back and forth a little bit here (up to 3 or 4 times), or we might have nailed the design the first time round – everyone is different, but the overall goal is the same, for you to be really happy with the design concept.

When you approve the design concept, I use it to create the standard page template, which I will also email through, and gives you an idea of what your website pages will look like, how the headings and page text will appear, along with links and buttons etc.

5. Development starts

With the design portion now finalised, things tend to get pretty quiet as I bunker down and start to build your new website! Depending on your project, this can take anywhere from 2 to 3 and even 4 weeks.

6. Website Testing

When your website is at a point which I feel is very close to launch, I upload it all to a test location on our web server, and send you a URL so you can take a look!

Your fully functional website will be visible and usable only via the link I send you, and not yet to the outside world.

Now is the time for you to review everything about the website and provide any final feedback or changes which are required before we go live. This could include minor tweaks to the layout, changes to the copy or images (which we limit to 2 rounds* so that budget is not exceeded and launch is not delayed).

* If you need to change any page copy once those two rounds of changes are exhausted, never fear! You will have the ability to change any and all content via the WordPress CMS once we go live.

7. Launch!

Pop the champagne! Your new website is now live, and visible for the world to see 🙂

As part of the launch process, I create a sitemap for your website and submit it to search engines (like Google) so they know your shiny new website is live, to start crawling your website content and adding your pages to their rankings**. If your website already exited but you’ve had a redesign, the sitemap is still created to inform search engines of any new content on your updated website.

** The timeframe between launching a new website and having your website appear in search engine results can vary, and will take at least 2 weeks. Read more about this in Googles FAQs

Need help deciding what information to include on your new website?

Here are some tips for creating a successful website, and a few reasons why your website must be responsive.