Website Development: In-depth guide for beginners

Handling web development projects without a clear process can feel like assembling a puzzle without knowing what the final picture looks like. A clear process and breaking down tasks into manageable steps can turn even a chaotic project into an organised and enjoyable one. Here is the step-by-step website development process that can prevent you from feeling overburdened.

Start with defining your project

The first step is to gather all the necessary information to help you define the project, identify the main goals, and target the audience. If you are a design team, ask relevant questions to deepen your business needs.

Also, analyse your client's needs to determine the website's purpose. Possible goals can be to share information, make money, or do both, but it'd be your team's responsibility to find ways to achieve business goals with a functional website.

To find an audience, determine the first group of people you want to reach, their age, preferences, and interests. Once you get answers to these questions, you can easily select the best web design aesthetic.

An important consideration is to familiarise website material with designers. Find answers to questions like what information the website's audience will be looking for. Are there certain details about goods or services, information about online purchases, or anything else? It is essential to keep content and design aligned.

Plan the entire process

If your web development staff doesn't understand your project's goals and needs, they won't be able to reach this planning stage. With the help of insights gathered during discovery sessions, backed by detailed research and analysis, they can gain a blueprint for effective web development.

Everything falls under the planning category, from selecting a technology stack and software development approach to defining deliverables, resource estimation, and project timeframe. Other tasks involved during the process include content structure, sitemap, wireframing, and developing the layout (UI and UX design).

You should choose a sitemap during the planning stage for the entire project's success. This involves planning the website's organisational structure, deciding the number of pages and functionalities to connect based on priority, and finalising what functionality and content should be included in the first release.

This stage will start with a suitable report, your prompt input, and your active participation in the procedure.

Build backend of your website

Coding might seem like the most complicated part of web development, but it's hardly the only component. Building both the back-end and front-end site designs and structures requires much effort.

The back end handles data that enables the front-end functionality, which mainly has two components.

One is databases, which store, organise, and process data to make it retrievable by server requests. The second component is servers, the software and hardware that make up your computer. These servers send, process, and receive data requests.

These servers are intermediaries between the database and the browser/client. The browser will inform the server that it needs this information, and the server will know how to get that information from the database and forward it to the client.

These components work together to build a website's foundation. Developers will also need to establish the following three things.

1. Logic code: A set of rules for how your site will respond to certain requests and how your website objects will interact.

2. Database management: How your website will organise, manage, and retrieve data.

3. Infrastructure: This is how your website will be hosted. Hosting your website gives you complete control, but it is expensive and requires you to manage your server security and health.

Websites that are purely informational and don't require the users to enter any data do not require a backend.

Build front-end of your website

If you have ever tried designing a website using WordPress, Google Sites, or Squarespace, you have already experienced front-end web development. This is the part of your website that your visitors, users, and customers see.

Front-end development includes a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to control components such as fonts and typography, positioning, navigation, and browser responsiveness and compatibility. This part will reveal the initial version of your site vision and what you plan to include in your wireframe.

With the rapid change in technology and consumer preferences, front-end web development is becoming outdated faster than back-end development.

Work with a CMS (optional)

You also have an option to choose a CMS instead of coding a website from scratch. Though a CMS offers less flexibility and control over the design of your website, it is easier to use.

You can integrate plenty of tools into CMS for hosting the website, creating a site, storing user information, creating a blog, publishing landing pages, building an email list, and even capturing leads.

In the end, you can make a more profitable website with less than half the work. CMS options also provide plug-ins that can remove the need to write a backend. Some of the popular CMS include WordPress, Magento, and HubSpot.

Plan and create your content

Planning and creating content frequently occurs with other stages of website development, but its importance cannot be understated. Whatever the essence of your business you want to convey to your website visitors should be expressed in writing, along with specific calls to action.

Writing content takes time and effort because it also requires the production of attention-grabbing, catchy headlines, text editing, writing new content, and assembling the current content. Usually, the clients undertake to provide website content that is ready to migrate to the website. This is mainly better when all content is provided before or during coding.

Test it before launch

Once your website is ready, you need to run detailed, systematic, and repeatable tests to elaborate on bug eradication before deploying it to a server. The quality assurance team will evaluate the product's usability, performance, and compatibility, among other factors.

You should test every page of your website to ensure your website is presented in the correct way across all devices and that all links are working properly. The titles and descriptions can significantly impact the performance of a webpage in different search engines. So, you must demonstrate that your website is ready for release and the market. With the help of thorough testing, it will be easy to identify upcoming upgrades that can be made to the website.

In the end, a development team will add a few finishing touches, considering how your website is used, to enhance its performance and functionality. The team will install plugins to improve on-page SEO and speed in the final step. Meanwhile, if everything is in order and the quality assurance team has approved your website, it will be deployed to a server.

Regular maintenance

A website acts as more of a service rather than a product, so it won't be enough to deliver a webpage to users. You need to ensure everything works properly, your users are happy, and you are always ready to make necessary ongoing adjustments.

A feedback system on your website can also help you identify the issues end users face. You are responsible for fixing issues as soon as possible; otherwise, your users will move to another website. Keep your website updated regularly to protect it from problems and reduce security threats.

Website security

We often read about denial-of-service attacks on the Internet, which make websites unavailable or cause homepages to show changed and sometimes harmful information. In some high-profile cases, millions of email addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers have also been exposed, leaving website users with financial loss and personal shame.

Website security plays a great role in preventing these kinds of assaults. It is the practice of defending websites against unauthorised access, destruction, usage, disruption, and alteration.

Effective website security requires attention at every level of the development process, from securing the website's design to protecting online applications, enforcing strong password policies, setting up a secure web server, and ensuring the safety of front-end code.

Though it all sounds overwhelming, the good news is that most server-side web frameworks have built-in security features to provide strong default defences against common security threats.