Website Design & Development Services - Where to Start?
by Ben Wilson on November 15th, 2016
Your website is usually the first contact you have with a potential customer, and it's vital to stand out from the crowd. Constructing a website from scratch can be intimidating, especially without the right expertise. So unless you have a team of website design and development experts, it's worthwhile to shop around to find a solution that is right for you.
Design and development, two sides of the same coin
Many businesses will use the terms 'website design' and 'website development' interchangeably in order to describe the process of building a new website. However, these two terms have completely different meanings and functions, and to get the most out of your website it's essential to know the difference.
Website design refers to the aesthetics and usability of the website. It's the part of the website that is important to the customer as it affects what they see and how easily they interact with the various features on your site. Website development is focused more on the parts of the website that the customer will never see, the so-called back-end elements that affect how it functions and performs. You can regard web development as the meat of the website, and web design as the skin. Both need to work together to create a seamless and worthwhile experience for the customer.
How a website is typically born
To create a great website, the entire process—from concept to final product—needs to be planned and meticulously executed. During the concept phase, traditional web designers will collaborate with you in order to decide on the overall website layout, the various pages, the aesthetics of the site and the placement of various elements such as product pages, online store and links to other pages. The design team then creates a prototype which they discuss with the developers to make sure the execution is feasible. The developers take the design concepts and create the website back-end and a first version of the working website. This then goes through a number of iterations to check for usability, mobile compatibility and to identify any bugs before going live.
This unstructured, iterative approach usually requires a significant number of changes to both the design and the technical architecture of the website. The ambiguity built in to the scoping and design processes can be extremely frustrating and it is often where project time frames and budgets are compromised.
Web Force 5 applies more streamlined processes using tools that are unique to the website industry and make the design and development of a website much more efficient by:
- Removing development based roadblocks and
- Reducing the number of review points during the design process.
This means that the website building experience is quick, cost effective and enjoyable for the website owner who really just wants the business outcomes an effective website offers his/her business. They don’t care about the technology.
Website content management
Of course, the process of creating a successful website doesn't stop once it goes live. Websites need to continually evolve to meet the changing needs of customers and unless the website does address those needs Google will not rank you well. If your company is going the inbound marketing route, you continuously need to update your website with fresh, exciting content and it's essential to have control over the website so you can immediately respond to any opportunities or other changes with adjustments or additions to website content. Web content management systems, such as the Web Force 5 Content Management System, allows users to make changes to the website, including adding content, editing and changing layouts and adding new pages. These content additions or changes are done the same way across all of the functionality of a Web Force 5 website which ensures that you don't need to be surrounded by a team of IT experts when you want to make changes to your website. The extreme ease of use of the Web Force 5 system allows website owners to spend more time focusing on running their business and less time on web design and development.
Website design elements are identified and created for each website based on the clients specific styling and branding requirements – no templates. Once created the styled elements (buttons, bullets, image frames, hyperlink colours and effects etc.) become part of the overall content management system so that styling remains consistent and easy as you continue to evolve your website and create new content
To find out more about the Web Force 5 content management system are related services..