Kulture Konnect Blog

For you new website designers out there in the process of building a new site, you're most likely looking to create it the quickest and easiest way possible. Yet, there is a ton of work involved. The time consumed and effort spent can be at times too much to handle. As a rookie web designer here are a few pointers to consider. The following  are four  steps to planning and organizing a website from start to finish with no time wasted.

1. Planning 

The first step is the most crucial part. Create a plan and strategy for your website, as this will be the foundation of the whole process. Brainstorming with those who are involved is a necessity, especially the project managers, quality assurance, designers and developers. The designer and developers should fully understand the entire process because they will  bring the project to life. The whole crew should agree on the process for the development. After finalization, everything should be given the ok. Planning should account  for 50% of the whole cycle.

2. Design and Development 

Next, the designer and developer should be working together on this stage. If the designer comes up with a feature for the site, the developer will need to be informed to find out if that feature is possible. You should also ask for suggestions and maybe explore other options. The designer should know basic web development principles such as grids and responsive layout. The mobile first approach will be helpful. The design should always start from the mobile point of view then extending it to a desktop view. This lessens the work of the developer fixing the responsive aspect of the whole website. The mobile approach will save a lot of time and effort from both the designer and developer. Everything from the planning to design should be implemented. Design and development represents  20% of the whole cycle.

3. QA

QA of course stands for: Quality Assurance in which is pretty straightforward. Checking for glitches such as responsive layout, function checking like forms, testing it with different devices and browsers as well as stress tests such as filling up a form in different scenarios. Validation checking should take place or functions such as search. If no results come up, it should give suggestions to the user so they can have other ideas on what your website can do. All possible scenarios should have it's own callback or a catch basin so the end user will not be left hanging. If quality assurance has found issues that need attention for a re-do, they should compile it and resend it to the developer. This is 20% of the whole cycle.

4. Launch 

Lastly, this stage requires everything to be put into place and executed as the final product should be ready for launch. Developers should be monitoring the website for a day or two incase a problem occurs. This will give them the chance to correct glitches or fix an error immediately. This is the remaining 10% of the whole cycle of the development.

Additional edits from the client should take place after the initial website is ready. If you are going to insert additional edits in the middle of development, you just wasted the effort and the whole cycle, especially the planning phase.

If you're looking to redesign your website downloads our 11-step checklist for your next website  redesign below. You may also contact us with any questions regarding building a website. Visit our portfolio for examples of our work here: WEBSITES