There is little doubt that to compete in today’s market you require an impressive web presence. It doesn’t matter whether your business is local or global, or a product or service; without a professional website you will be fighting an uphill battle against your competition. Savvy shoppers, both B2B and B2C, no longer use directories or even just take advice from a friend. When they have a need, they go online and do their research before shortlisting their available options.
This makes the design of your website one of the most important elements of your business. It will not only impact the impression that people have of you and your company but is the first step in developing that all-important digital marketing that helps people find you long term. The question is how long should you expect it to take for your website to go from conception to being fully functional.
There is no simple or exact answer to this question. Depending on your specific requirements, your brand, preferred look and feel as well as the functionality you require, a professionally designed web site can take anywhere from 4 week to 12 week or more.
To deliver professionally designed websites that create the user experience your customers expect across all of the various devices used today really does take time. Keep in mind that your website is the centre of all marketing activities.
The four main phases in the website design process:
- Discovery phase
- Design phase
- Modification period
- Migration and launch
Discovery phase
The discovery phase is perhaps the most important part of the web design process and where you can do the most to help assure your site is up and running in the shortest possible time. Having a clear vision of what type of website you are wanting, your preferred colour scheme, content needs and what functionality you want to be built into the website will go a long way toward making this process as quick and painless as possible. Being able to show examples from other websites is even better.
Design phase
This where your website designer works their magic creating your website with all of the functionality, accessibility, QA and of course the appearance that will become your company’s online personality. Being available to answer questions and possibly review their work at certain points can make this phase much smoother.
Modification period
This is sometimes called a testing phase. You will be shown your completed website, asked to play with it and make sure everything looks and functions as you envisioned it. This is the time for those minor tweaks that can have a major impact later so don’t rush it.
Migration and launch
Once you are satisfied with your new website it will be time to take it live on the Internet. This process will depend in part on the type of hosting service you have chosen.
Whether your dream website is for a blog, e-commerce site or just information about your company it pays to work with a full-service web development team like kmo web design. With the wide variety of design styles and complexity that can be involved there is, understandably, no set-in-stone time frame to complete every website design project. As a general rule though they can have your site up and wowing your prospects in as little as 4-6 weeks for a standard business site.
