Different businesses will follow different processes involving different groups of people when designing, developing and implementing a website, but regardless of the approach you choose to take, how formal or informal the process, there are a number of key stages that generally form part of any web development project.
In the tech-oriented world, it is quite challenging for developers and designers to opt for a reliable web hosting platform like WHMCS and customize your WHMCS based website just the way you want.
Planning
Establish your goals for the site; analyse the competition; define who your target market is, how they will find you online and what they will be looking for when they arrive; map out a schedule and decide who will do what and when.
Design
Decide on the ‘look and feel’ of the site: colours, graphics, information architecture (the arrangement or structure of the information), navigation, etc. The way that information is arranged can have a big impact on a site’s usability and its perceived relevance and authority both for users and search engines. If you have worked hard to create a website, enhanced it with coming soon pages, implemented author boxes, accepted guest posts, and so on, I am sure you want to see that same website succeed. Achieving that might be tough, but it is definitely worth it!
Development
Putting it all together, taking the agreed design and constructing the actual pages of the site, crafting the content, links and navigation hierarchy.
Testing
Making sure everything works the way it should before you let it out onto the big bad internet.
Responsive web design (RWD)
If your customers are mobile then you would probably be wise to design your site with mobile screen sizes and functionality in mind (more on this later in this chapter).
Deployment
Your new site becomes live on the internet for the whole world to find… or not, as the case may be.
