A great website is a must for an online presence these days. However, many people take things easy on their design now that you can spin up a new site with a few clicks of a button.

But when 94% of first impressions are based on a site’s design, you can’t afford to cut corners on the design process and offer a poor user experience.

Knowing what the website development process is like in practice is critical to building a site. Keep reading to learn how every small business owner should handle the website design process.

Validation Phase

The first step to developing a website is researching what you’re going to build. A great idea isn’t worth much if people aren’t interested in your business or what you have to say.

Check to see if there are other sites in your industry. If you see people interested in content and willing to buy products in an industry, the chances are good that you’ll find people interested in your site.

Wireframe Phase

After you confirm that you have demand for your website, it’s time to start the design process. However, you shouldn’t just start coding it straight away. You need to plan every screen on your site first.

A wireframe will help you create that plan. It lays out every screen on your site and how visitors navigate between the screens to find the information and website features they need.

Design Phase

You’re ready to design your site once you determine what each screen looks like. Of course, you’ll need to consider more than your needs during this process. You’re designing your site to provide an excellent experience for everyone.

Think of the colors and user interface that make your content easy to digest and navigate. You’ll also need to design features with accessibility in mind for people who can’t read websites normally. This page will tell you more about website accessibility.

Programming Phase

It’s time to write the code to build your website once you have the design created. Pass your design files to your developers and tell them about every feature you need for your site.

Don’t leave anything to chance here. Detail what goes into every feature to ensure your programming team doesn’t miss anything. Have your team give you constant updates about the progress to ensure everything is functioning as they complete each task.

Testing Phase

Your website isn’t complete once you finish the design and development. No matter the skill level of your developers, there will likely be a few bugs in your website code. You need to find as many of those bugs as possible before launching.

Make sure you test every version of your website, as well. A bug that appears on a mobile device may not appear on the desktop version. Ideally, get a few potential customers to look through your site and use it and get feedback about their experiences.

Now You Know the Website Development Process

Even if you can get a new website up and running in a few minutes, it takes another skill to properly design a site and provide a unique experience for your visitors. The above website development process is consistent across the industry, so expect to go through it when you design a site the right way.

Check out the blog to learn more about website design trends that can help you create an amazing online experience for your visitors.