A website needs to stay true to a brand or a person’s identity. Additionally, it is important to ascertain the objectives that an entity aims to accomplish through the website. Deliberating on these factors, conducting extensive research about the work of shadow brands in the industry, along with finalising the type and tonality of a website are the first steps towards creating an impactful and aesthetic website. Securing a domain is also a crucial task that needs to be undertaken at this stage.

This is a vital step that brings clarity to the ideas. This seemingly simple step helps ascertain the flow of information on the website and creates a form and structure for the portal. More importantly, a good sitemap helps direct Google to index your pages accurately and send the visitors to the right pages allowing them to find the information in an organized fashion without letting them divert or lose interest.

After the site map, the layout is another factor that ensures that navigation on the page is smooth. This step also ensures that the website is aesthetically pleasing and that the content dissemination on the website is appropriate. An important part of the design process, a good layout also ensures that the ratio of visuals (graphics & text) is optimal and that the visitors find navigating through the content interesting.

After the basic framework of a website is in place, the actual design process starts. Ascertaining colours and fonts, creating graphic elements, and other such tasks are completed. This phase illustrates the visual style of the website. Making use of tools like style tiles and moodboards further helps enhance the aesthetic value of the website. This process can be completed through the use of ready templates also, which makes the process easier and reduces the turnaround time. Although nothing can beat a customised website created from the ground up.

This process usually runs simultaneously with the designing process. Relying heavily on research and understanding of the entity, this step should ideally support the visual tonality and enhance the impact of the design communication. It is hence vital that the content is in harmony with the tonality of the website and the identity of the brand. At Decode, we do not treat content development as a separate task but keep it integrated with the website development process.

This is one of the most crucial steps in the process of developing a website as it makes it easier for users to discover it. It also ensures that the volume of traffic created is relevant to your brand and identity and that the visitors do not bounce off but spend time on the website. Apart from carefully curating a list of keywords and incorporating them into the text, adding impactful title tags, meta descriptions and backlinks are also a part of the process. Together, these steps help the website rank higher on search engines.

The actual coding is when the website is made functional. Assembling the content, graphic elements and the images that are curated in earlier stages, and frameworks and CMS are implemented. Interactivity between the elements is facilitated and plug-ins are incorporated. In other words, coding is when every element is made to work that it is intended for, both at the front end and the backend. Once this work is done, the website is thoroughly tested for any snags that may have occurred. Each button and link is tested and the website is made as fullproof as possible at this stage.

Smartphones have ensured that we carry mini-computers in our pockets at all times. Naturally, more often than not, we use mobile to search and navigate through websites. Nevertheless, the functioning of mobile as hardware is different, as are its dimensions. It is hence important that any website that is created is made responsive for mobile users to make it easily accessible and more user-friendly.

This is when a website is made live for the public. Many brands also organize launch parties to celebrate this occasion or advertise the event on online and offline channels. This creates curiosity amongst the audience and drives traffic towards it. This also helps in the long run as the website’s performance on search engines automatically improves.

Maintenance of a website includes renewing the domain cost, revamping content from time to time, and making it more SEO friendly. Updating content and improving SEO involves updating the products/services that the brand offers, adding blogs and keeping the audience updated on the latest developments in your company. Garnering feedback from consumers and smoothening any snags that may have crept up is also an important task. This will also ensure that no security risks have risen.