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Christina Meador
Christina Meador

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The Stages of Web Design

What is Web Design?

Every successful organization has a website that is aesthetically pleasing and functionally responsive. A good design proves to be the foundation of a great website. Web design is the process of planning, creating and laying out content intended for the website on the internet. Web Design impacts how the audience perceives your brand.

A good design improves the usability and the overall accessibility of the website. Better design means more site traffic. Designing a website is not just about web pages with fancy colors or captivating layouts. It’s about developing brand value by understanding the marketing challenges behind the business.

Have you heard the saying, “Great content sells fast”? That’s not entirely true in regard to website design and development. In this industry, “Great content sells fast as long as it remains in easily accessible web design.” For example, a pizza tastes good when you combine the right type of dough with the right toppings; similarly, the right content in the right design helps you provide the users with the best possible experience.

Just like many pillars support a building, great designs are supported by many elements, including layout, user-friendly content, interactiveness and minimal load time.

What are the Stages of Web Design?

Food only tastes good when the right set of ingredients are added. Likewise, creating a perfect web design is only possible if all the correct elements are put in the correct order. To create a good web design, we must first identify the goals, purpose, target audience and actual needs of the users who will be using this product.

Next comes the planning phase. In this phase, the overall structure of the website is determined. The designer should create a site map in this phase with the information that was acquired in the information acquisition phase. A site map describes the relationship between your website’s main areas, and helps the client understand how usable the final product will be.

Next comes the designing phase, which is where the website takes on its overall shape. A good design is often misunderstood to be a style, but it is actually an all-encompassing language. In addition, a design is only as good as it is accessible. The design phase is also where a layout gains colors, logos and images and really shapes the fundamental understanding of the future product.

The content creation phase is the process of transferring overarching thoughts into concrete ideas. This is the process of writing suitable content that closely matches your business goals. Content and design intermingle, and both aid in making a website usable and easy to understand.

Before the launch of a new product, the design must go through rigorous testing to ensure the final product offers a seamless, elegant experience for the user. The process of testing is an eternal and integral part of maintaining a good design. A great web application is never the result of an accident, but the methodical application of design-centered planning. During this phase, a designer can use pre-launch incentives such as Alpha and Beta programs to obtain maximum intimate and applicable feedback.

Finally, the maintenance phase is a crucial part of the design lifecycle and comes post-launch of the product. You must keep your customers happy and interested in your product. A properly maintained web application will show improved overall loading speed, provides immunity from sensitive information leaks and protects the overall integrity of the product.

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