Website Development - Step by Step

So you're ready to promote your business online....how do you get started? Here we take you step by step through the web development process. Below is a brief four step process that is essential to every website design and development project.

Step 1: Business Requirements

First, determine what kind of activities you want your customers to be able to perform on your website. Do you want to set up an ecommerce site where potential customers can learn about and purchase your products? Do you want a billboard site with information about your company and where potential customers can go to purchase your products? Activities that you can provide your customers may include:

Shopping
Registration
Requesting information
Searching a database
Downloading or uploading files
Discussion forums

Step 2: Feature Requirements

Identify the features that you want to add to your website to make it more engaging and interactive. For example, if you want to set up an ecommerce site, you may want to have a shopping cart. Some common features are:

Forms - allows visitors to easily submit or request information
Message Boards - visitors can leave or respond to messages
Photo Galleries - display graphical information on your products or services
Counters - track the number of times a page has been viewed
Flash Animation- create interesting animated content
Video Clips of Products or TV Ads
Search - allow visitors to search for content
Shopping Cart - software that collects and records the purchases of your customers
Inventory Management - automatic updating of your inventory

Step 3: Service Provider Requirements

Determine the expertise you need. There are two components to the creation of a website: Design and Development; Design deals with the front-end look and feel. Development deals with the back end functionality. These are distinct skill sets so make sure you hire a person or persons that can provide you with what you need. (Streamlined Office Solutions provides both design and development, as well as Search Engine Optimization.)

Step 4: Budget Requirements

Website projects typically start at under a thousand dollars and go up to several thousand depending on the complexity and size of the site you would like. In addition to the cost of designing and developing your site, you need to consider these additional costs: domain name registration, site hosting and site maintenance. (SOS provides these additional services at the best value for your money...compare our prices)

Be sure to include website promotion in your budget. You may want to utilize pay-per-click advertising with the major search engines such as Google and Overture, and will probably need to pay nominal charges to be listed in a variety of top ranking directories.

Other budget considerations: subscribing to a site statistics program provider to track detailed information about your website visitors, which products and pages are the most popular and which are not.

PLANNING YOUR PROJECT

Now that you know some of the basics, you need to put together a simple project plan to help you communicate your project needs. Follow these guidelines when putting your plan together.