The Life Cycle of Web Design

Website design is essentially cyclic in nature especially if the website supports an online business. If you are an affiliate marketer you will know the importance of setting up a website quickly and efficiently. The graphics must keep an essence of the website and blend well with the web design. The designers make sure of this but the rest of the web design takes a whole lot more effort. The process is also cyclic in nature, as in you need to do the same steps repeatedly for a good website.

Getting started

The first part of the web design life cycle is analyzing just what you expect your website to do. Is it a standalone website or will it be used to drive traffic to another website? Is it an informative website with lots of content or just a set of pretty pictures put together with a common theme? Is the website going to sell something directly or will it direct customers to another site where they can buy a product owned by you? Will there be need for credit card interfaces on the website or will Paypal be the only payment system that will be accepted?

Once you have analyzed all this you will have a better idea about the specifications that you want to include as you build the website. Now comes the actual design and development of the website. If you are good at code you can do it by yourself, if not you can always outsource it to someone who knows more about such matters. The aspects to be considered here include the general layout of the website, the site navigation, and the dynamic elements that will need to be updated on a regular basis.

Of course it makes sense to have a fully working prototype of the site ready before you actually decide to make it live on the internet. That way any design flaws that may exist can be spotted and corrected before you lose customers over a faulty navigation system on the site or some equally bad reason. Testing should ideally be done by someone other than the designer. The fresh set of eyes will not be influenced with the code that has already been written and will give a better appraisal of the site.

It’s ready. What next?

Once the site is up and running it needs serious marketing and promotion. That is a whole new challenge altogether. You can find plenty of Search Engine Optimizers or SEOs. But be wary, some techniques are white hat while others known as black hat SEO can get you and your site into trouble.

Other ways to promote the site would be using advertising banners on other high traffic sites. Of course these days exploiting social media to popularize your web sites is a common practice as well. If the site makes an impression well and good, if not start from the beginning all over again.

Source: smallbusinesscan.com