Millbrook Web Design & Development

It’s important to know what goals you have for your website. Designing and redesigning a website takes a lot of preparation and planning. Our certified professionals are here when you need us. The goals and objectives that are established at the outset of the project influence all future decisions. The first step in the definition process is interviewing the organization’s stakeholders to identify the strategic goals of the site, understand key audience needs and identify key competitors.

Site architecture includes the sitemap and wireframes of pages. Creating the sitemap ensures that you’ve considered all the key pages in the site, showing their relationship to each other and defining how the sties overall navigation should be structured. Wireframes provide a detailed view of the content that will appear on each page. Although they do not show any actual design elements, the wireframes provide a guide for defining content hierarchy on the page.

When the framework is in place and the organization is clear, it’s time to work out the visual design. Whatever brand you’re designing for, it will have an identity shaped by an aesthetic and a voice. As a designer, it’s your job to communicate the brand’s essence through the visual choices you make.

With designs approved, it’s time to flesh out the design of the pages, develop new content and refine old content, create videos, slideshows, podcasts and other media that will appear on the site as well as start to build out the HTML and CSS of the site.

Before the site is launched, it will be placed on a production server where only internal audiences and anyone who you share the link with can view it. Testing of the site is critical as there will inevitably be issues that need to be addressed before the site goes live. There is nothing that erodes a brand more than a site that doesn’t function properly or that has misspellings or broken design elements. At this stage the site will need to be reviewed on multiple browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer) and multiple devices (laptops, tablets, and mobile) to see if and where breaks occur.

The big day. You’ve tested the site, had it reviewed and approved by the project stakeholders, and you’re ready to launch. But once the site is launched, the project isn’t over — you should be prepared to address feedback from users adapting to the new site. Expect to make some immediate changes to the site, such as fixing broken links, editing copy and making adjustments. The Web is a fluid medium that changes on a daily, if not hourly basis — change is inevitable.

Websites are living, breathing entities and need constant care and maintenance. Updating content, making changes to the backend and fixing broken links are all in a day’s work.  All of these phases are critical to the Web design process. But the thread that runs through the process is strategy: the desire to achieve a goal, to move the organization forward, to prosper in a competitive environment. Let’s take a look at what strategy is, how it is formulated and how it translates to the Web.