What are the Stages of Building a Website?

by Burke Dorman
3 mins read
How long does it take to build a website

Building a website these days is easier than it has ever been before. With agencies and web design service providers, almost anyone can try their hand at building their own functional website. There are in fact almost 2 billion websites online today.

But what are the stages to building a website? It’s an answer many people need in order to start planning, and information online can be overwhelming.

That’s why we’ve tackled the question head-on. We’re going to let you know the stages of building your website, depending on the type of website you’re building.

That way, you can set out your website design stages and launch your website in an organized, processed fashion.

Computer Screen and Mobile Phone With Responsive Website Design development planning

Stages of Building Your Website

Let’s get the main question out of the way first; what stages go into building a website? As an important part of your digital marketing strategy, this is dependent on each individual case.

The answer to this question depends on what kind of website you plan on building. For example, if you’re using a drag-and-drop website builder and starting from a template, the design process could be a lot less extensive.

However, if you’re using more complex methods to build a more comprehensive website, you could be looking at more rigorous process with more stages.

If you’re setting out on designing a website, you should follow these stages from from conceptualizing to launch: the planning stage, the initial design phase, the website development stage, and lastly, the reviewing and launching stage. We’ll explain these stages a little further below.

The Planning Stage

To build and design a website properly, you have to plan ahead. In the planning stage, you can do things like creating a style guide for your web content or make a map of all the links your website will make between all of your webpages.

This is arguably the most important part of the whole design process. It’s where you think up the concept of your website and what you’re setting out to achieve.

It’s best to see this phase as a collaborative effort if you’re building a website as a team. You should involve a copywriter, a graphic designer, and anyone else involved in making your website a reality.

Initial Design Phase

This is the bulk of your design and is where you’re going to get started with creation. You’ll build mock-ups for each of your webpages to see how your layout and style mesh.

You’ll also be creating a basic outline of how your website works. These are the little things that few people think about but are what really makes a website work.

Think of this as a website’s infrastructure. It’s about integrating links, establishing easy-to-understand content, thinking about conversion rates, and managing the overall layout of your website.

Often, much of this is handled without actually developing the website itself. Think of it as the link between initial planning and the full development of your website.

Website design stage illustration

Website Development Phase

Now, this is where you properly build your website. If you’re outsourcing your web design, this is where they’ll get to work on the plans you’ve made.

Or, this is where you’ll try your hand at building a website yourself. This stage will depend entirely on how well you’ve planned, as well as how good you are at coding languages or other aspects of web development.

It’s by far the lengthiest stage of the website building process, as everything needs to be programmed into your website at this phase. This includes inputting everything you’ve prepared in the earlier stages, like logos, web copy, and other aspects. But it isn’t the final stage in the process.

Working programmer on site development

Reviewing and Launching

The final stage involves checking your website to ensure everything is working the way it should. This is important to ensure all small technical, development, or design errors are fixed.

Without this phase, you can’t launch the website properly as this is where you eliminate any potential flaws or risks that can impact your website’s visibility and SEO rankings.

As you can see, there are essential stages to building a well-designed, fast, and user-friendly website.

Outsourcing your web design to a web design company is a great option, as they will be more experienced with the development stages and processes. But it is feasible to build your own website with the right knowledge, drive and organization of stages.

website launch illustration

Where Can I Find Out More About Website Development?

Now you know the stages of building a website. But there’s so much more that goes into designing a website than these stages.

We know you likely have many more questions about web design that we’ve not covered in this post. Make sure to take a look through some of the previous posts on our website to find out more about web design and other aspects of digital marketing.

Or, if you have a question you can’t find the answer to, make sure to contact us directly.

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