A website has become a ubiquitous and vital element of modern life and business. The first one was rolled out in 1991 and has grown exponentially afterwards. In current times, no business can thrive without a website. This is where you connect with your customers.
However, website development is a tough cookie. It includes all aspects ranging from getting a domain name to constructing the front-end and back-end of the website. It involves taking care of details that help create a website that is easy to use and reflects your brand positively.
What Does Web Development Involve?
The creation of a website involves both web development and web design. Web development caters to website functionality, but web design pertains to the looks of websites. Both of these are equally vital for the construction of a website.
At the core, website development implies coding and web markup powered by languages such as JavaScript, CSS and HTML. It also has elements like CMS (Content Management System), e-commerce integrations, security configurations, etc.
Web development includes back-end, front-end and full-stack development. Back-end development is linked to applications, databases and servers that function behind the scenes. It includes the use of server-side programming languages such as Java, Python, and Ruby.
Front-end development makes use of languages such as CSS (styling), HTML (structure) and JavaScript (interactivity). This is not to be confused with web design, as it is composed of coding rather than visual elements.
Then there is Full-stack development, which uses both back-end and front-end expertise. It helps developers to cater to all steps of website development.
Steps In Web Development
1. Define the Project
In this first stage of web development, you need to define the project’s goals. Such goals include:
- Details of business: Define your vision, mission, USP, aim, offerings, stakeholders etc.
- Goals of business: Establish measurable and clear deliverables for your website to develop the best strategy, such as the KPIs to be used for measuring success.
- Target audience: This must be defined, and research must be undertaken to find out their likes and dislikes, online habits and other valuable data.
- Competition: Research your competition, analyse weaknesses and strengths and develop a proper positioning of your brand.
2. Design Of Website
After properly defining the website, such a stage of website architecture design helps bring the project to life. Typically, a professional in web development hired by you will use the approved material to make the workflows, UX, layout and look of the site. Some of the critical steps are:
- Definition of visual branding: Imagery, fonts and colour schemes for page layouts.
- Development of wireframes: Sketch layouts of low fidelity and visual comps of high fidelity.
- Design of core pages: graphics, templates of content pages, graphics, etc.
- Refining of UX flows: enable easy navigation of pages.
3. Back-End and Front-End Construction
After approval and creation of the design, the web development team undertakes the custom back-end and front-end construction. In this complicated stage, problem-solving ability, modern web development technologies and creative engineering are required to build a fully functional and dynamic site. Elements include:
- Site architecture of program: Configuration of CMS and hosting
- Integration of 3rd party tools: Connect API’ and plug-ins as per plan
- Build of front-end: Use JavaScript, CSS, HTML markup, etc.
- Build of back-end: Coding server side in languages such as Python, Ruby and PHP.
- Structure of database: Development of efficient database models.
- Creation of admin portals: enabling clients to manage content.
You will need back-end and front-end developers to construct your website, using best practices of the industry and detailed documents for specifications.
4. Creation Of Content
This step includes planning and creation of content. Based on your target audience, content creation may involve (though not limited to):
- Descriptions of products and services
- Landing pages
- Case studies
- Testimonials
- Videos
- Blog posts
- Images
- White papers
- Newsletters
- Posts on social media
The content must be created based on the target audience. Make use of strategic optimisation of keywords, all through the content to provide the answers for the search intent of potential customers and to encourage their decisions to purchase.
5. Testing Of Website
Before pushing your website to live status, you need to conduct thorough testing of the site. Web development professionals need to check the functionality of all aspects of your website. The objective is to detect issues like compatibility with varied devices and broken links to ensure everything is working properly.
Make use of validators to ascertain whether the code adheres to the standards, conduct checks on the speed of the site and ensure that it is responsive on all kinds of devices like mobiles, laptops and tablets. After this, your site is ready to go live.
6. Maintaining The Website
Voila- your site is live! However, this is not the end of the work. With the growth of the business, you may need to expand the number of pages, update features, equip it with more functionalities, etc. Regular maintenance comprises of:
- Editing of existing content
- Adding more content
- Dosing back-ups of the site
- Fixing issues and bugs
- Installing plug-ins
When you hire a professional web developer to handle such tasks, your brand will never be outpaced by the competition. If you have business in and around Panchkula and want to build a website, a website development company in Panchkula can handle the task of web development. And the digital marketing company in Panchkula will do the rest of the work to market your website.
In sum, these are the steps or stages in web development. From proper planning, design, web development, content creation, testing and maintenance, these steps will ensure the appropriate development of a website.
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