How to Manage a Web Development Process

Whether it’s to promote a major marketing initiative, to drive business as a key e-commerce element, or to simply act as an online business card for your services, nearly all small business owners find themselves needing to develop a website at one point or another. And if you don’t know the first thing about Photoshop or HTML coding, you’re likely going to have to hire and collaborate with a web designer to make it happen.

When embarking on such a project, it can often feel like you’re putting your livelihood in the designer’s hands. Which can be a scary prospect when you don’t even know the language they’re speaking (e.g. terms like front-end, back-end, CMS, AJAX, SEO).

Below, I outline the key phases of the web design and development process, what happens during each, and some questions you’ll want to think about.

1. Content

What is going to be on your website? Organizing the information on your website in the best way will be the job of your designer, but you still need to have a good idea of: 1) what all of the bits of information are, 2) how frequently they might be updated, and 3) the buckets into which they might be organized. For instance, a standard site for a web design firm might include these sections: Portfolio, a showcase of work (content updated periodically); Services, a list of the company’s offerings (content relatively static); News, updates on new clients, launches, etc (updated regularly); About, experience & qualifications (relatively static); Contact, how to get in touch (relatively static).

It’s worth noting that you will be responsible for generating all of the copy and/or media needed for your site, unless you have explicitly engaged the design firm to handle it. Content development is not typically included in a standard “design” proposal. And if you need to produce content on an ongoing basis, you should think about, as you enter the design process, how it will be generated. You want a news blog, but who’s writing the posts? You want video, but do you have the budget to shoot and produce it? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you decide which content pieces are really necessary – and then build the design around them.

2. Wireframing/Information Architecture

Web design is not just about graphics, it’s also about the arrangement and organization of information. To ensure that the information is organized in the optimum way, most design firms will do a “wireframing” phase prior to doing any real graphic design. A wireframe is akin to an architect’s blueprint for a house – it helps you agree on all of the elements to be included, their organization, and their hierarchy, before you move into aesthetics.

3. Design

Once a wireframe that outlines the architecture of the site’s information has been agreed upon, the actual graphic design begins. How this phase unfolds is unique to every designer. Some will present a single direction and use it as a jumping off point for refinement based on your feedback; others will present a variety of different design directions (or “comps”) for a key subset of the webpages to be designed – you pick a direction, and then it’s fleshed out to represent all of the pages required.

One key thing to keep in mind during this process is that a design is static (usually you’re looking at jpeg images of what the site will look like) – that is, nothing is clickable as it is on a real website. You won’t see how rollovers, hover states, and so on work. So it’s good to always ask the designer what will happen functionality-wise if there’s any lack of clarity.

4. Development

Once you and the designer have agreed that the design for all pages if final, the website moves into development, during which time it’s coded to look like the design. It’s important to understand that once the site moves into the coding/development phase, making any design changes can incur additional charges. While it’s easy to make changes in Photoshop, it’s much more time-consuming to code and re-code pages. The length of this process will vary depending on what type of site you’ve chosen – HTML or Flash; with (or without) a Content Management System or e-commerce functionality.

It’s worth understanding that very rarely are the designer and the developer the same person. The developer may be another individual in the design firm you’ve hired, or it may be someone that the designer has contracted out. So that you understand how communication will flow during this phase, it’s good to know what the hierarchy is – and if a consistent person will be managing the process with you throughout.

5. Testing

After the development is complete, typically there will be a small window where the site is hosted on a “staging server” – at a non-public domain/URL – and you can test it out to ensure that the design looks as planned and the functionality is as expected. If at some point between the “design” phase and this phase, you’ve decided you want additional functionality, know that this might make your designer crazy and that it will almost certainly mean additional costs. The testing phase is essentially to make sure that the agreed-upon design has been executed properly, and if not, to make the necessary fixes.

6. Hosting/Launch

If acronyms like “DNS” and “FTP” are Greek to you, hopefully you have agreed with your designer that they will be in charge of communicating with whatever web hosting service you have (or that they recommend) to push the site live once it’s ready. Launching the site is part of the package for most designers, but it’s worth confirming before the project commences.

7. Ongoing Support

Once the site has been launched, typically the designer’s role is complete. However, if you are not particularly web savvy, you may need ongoing assistance. If your website goes down, are you comfortable calling your web hosting service to figure out what’s wrong and remedy it? If so, great. If not, you might want to make sure you have an arrangement with your designer for ongoing support. But don’t assume it’s included.

*** This article is based on the research and writing of J.K. Glei. She regularly collaborates with Scott Belsky and the Behance Team, who run the Behance Creative Network, the 99% productivity think thank, the Action Method project management application, and the Creative Jobs List.