Becoming A Website Designer: A FirstPlus Website Development methodology
Sure, maybe you are a website designer and needs a methodology to develop a website. Or maybe you are hiring a website designer and you are not quite sure of the process of designing websites. Sound familiar? If so, keep reading.
I want to share with you my Website Development Life Cycle. A PROVEN Step-by-Step method for Taking What You Already Know, Using Skills You Already Possess, to develop a website and Get it lunched in the internet and Become a website designer
This has been developed from my experience as a website designer and trainer with WordPress for about 5 years now. It was developed because some of the participants of my WordPress Seminar have asked me many times “What is the process of developing a website”. To answer this question, I decided to adopt the Classical Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) as it related to website design and development.
It is a step-by-step process for designing websites and my participants call it: FirstPlus Website development methodology.
Let’s get started.
Website Development Life Cycle
This website development life cycle is a six-phase process. Some people might present it in less or more phases. They may also be some variations in the manner some people do their website design. However, it covers all the activities that a website designer performs.
Phase One: Information Gathering
A website could be defined as a collection of web pages about an entity and the entity can be a person(living or dead), a place, a business (or company), an organization (group of people) and a concept.
Therefore, the first activity of a website designer is to gather information about the entity. You can gather by reading some books/literature, observing the entity and its behaviour, interviewing people, using questionnaire and any other information gathering technique. The information to be gathered may include text, images (pictures/photos), videos and audios. These will be used to create the content of the website.
The quantity of information that you can gather depends on available literature and the extent you know and understanding the entity. For a business, you will need to know the mission, vision, products/services, clients, competitors, competition, history and so on. You may also like to know the business goals and dreams and how the web can be utilized to achieve them. Therefore, it is very important that you start designing your website by asking questions and gathering information about the entity. The more information that you gather, the richer your content.
For you to understand on the necessary information that you need to produce a rich content website, you can read Developing A Rich Content Website? 9 Important Questions You Must Be Able To Answer
Phase Two: Planning
After you have gathered all the necessary information about the entity, you have to study the relationships between the information and group them into main topics and sub-topics (as applicable). This will guide you on how the information will be presented in the website and how the website will be navigated. It will also help you to plan how the main topic and sub-topics will be arranged. At the end, you will produce the site map which will guide you on what content will be on the site.
You are advised to be consistent in your flow and ensure that visitors will be able to navigate the website easily. You must always keep the site visitors in mind when designing your site map.
In this planning stage you need to plan what information will be displayed on the homepage, how users will interface and navigate the website. This will help you to understand the features that will be on the site.
Also, it may interest you to know that most website designer do not take these first two phases very serious. They start designing the website without gathering and planning the information required on the website. This may work well If you are designing a small website. However, if you are designing a big website, neglecting these phases can lead to wastage of time and resources.
Phase Three: Design
At this phase, you will determine the theme of the website. The theme determines the website layout, look and feel, and how and where the information will be displayed. You should also ensure that color, logo and layout strengthen the identity of the entity. You must identify the required features of the website and the necessary resources that will provide these features.
Your understanding of the demography of the target visitors will help you to choose the theme. For example, a website that is targeted at teenagers will look much different from the one meant for a financial institution.
If you are designing the website for someone else, you may have to create a prototype to show the owner or allow the owner to access to the site at this stage for comments. This will give the owner the opportunity to express his likes and dislikes on the site design and assist you to avoid wasting of resources. You and the website owner may have to exchange ideas until you arrive at the final design of the website.
Sometime, the website owner may not be able to express their likes and dislikes about the design. In such situation, you may continue with your design but ensure that you supersede the expectation of the owner because after you have educated him/her, he/she will begin to apply the knowledge against you. Sometimes, it is difficult to manage this situation.
Phase Four: Development
At this phase, you will create the website. The 4 methods of creating a website can be examined by clicking here. The actual webpages with its content including text, graphics/pictures and audios/videos are created here. You may first create the homepage followed by other pages. It is necessary to note that the order to creating the web pages is not important because you can always link the webpages as required using hypertext links.
A natural approach is to create the home page first, followed by a “shell” for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web site. Once the shell has been created, the designer will take the content and distribute it throughout the site, to the appropriate areas.
Also, if you are using a Content Management System (like WordPress) to develop the website, you will include all the features of the site by using the appropriate plugins, widgets and so on.
Phase Five: Testing and Delivery
It is a common practice for website designers to always test the look and feel of their webpages as they are creating them and make necessary amendments as required to make sure it is working well. However, it is a good practice to always check again. You can still test how the features of the website are working; check the menus, navigation, links and so on. You can also test the website in different browsers to see how it appears and if necessary make necessary corrections and optimizing speed.
Once you have finished testing your website and is working well, then it is time for you to deliver and launch it in the internet.
Just a quick reminder, for you to launch your website in the internet you require a hosting account. This involves registering a domain name in a registry and hosted it in a web server.
You may take some precaution to ensure that all the files have been uploaded and test the website after uploading to ensure that it is functional very well. This is the official launching of the website and it is now available to the public to visit and view.
Phase Six: Maintenance
The launching of a website may not be the end of its development, except you want the website to remain static. If you want to drive traffic and engage visitors you need to continuously offer fresh and unique contents. Any time, you want to add new content (a new page or post) to the website, you have to follow the cycle.
However, there are some activities that you will be doing at this phase. One of them is taking the site backup regularly. If the website is developed using a Content Management System like WordPress, you will be performing activities like WordPress upgrades, changing of themes as required, upgrading and/or installing additional plugins and so on.
Finally, this Website Development Methodology is designed to be modular as a step-by-step process that delivers the website in an incremental manner. This ensures that you understand the entity, plan your content before physically building the website. Following this approach will help you to design a website quickly with minimal mistakes. Even if you are adding the content bit by bit, It will help you to know where to add what and why. This is a methodology that will help you develop and design a website right the first time.
Thank you very much
Augustus Zekaryah
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About the author
Augustus is a management, banking and business computing professional with over 20 years of documented success in the field. Augustus is recognized for the application of software to solving business problems, Software Project Management, Enterprise Architecture Strategy, and Delivery of learning solutions with focus on adaptability, Development and execution of business plans, General management and administration, Operations management and Best practice development. Augustus founded and manages FirstPlus Integrated Business Solutions (https://firstplus-ibs.com.ng) as a Software and Business Consulting outfit that specializes in Software development and integration, E-Learning development, Business and Marketing Planning, Consulting and training.Augustus brings to his work a high level of energy, passion, commitment and humour. He is married with children.
