Below are the general phases involved when creating a website and the website development timeline can vary significantly associated with each stage, depending on the requirements for each project; however, this list will provide guidelines for what you can expect.
Planning & Design (2 to 4 weeks)
This stage includes identifying the project requirements, site architecture, wireframes and sitemap creation. Based on outputs of the planning stage, the project will then move to the design phase. This is when the initial designs are created and presented for feedback to establish a template design (layouts) that meets your goals for the new website. This may include homepage designs, internal page designs, desktop views, and mobile views, and can take up a large percentage of the website development timeline.
Layout Development (2 to 4 weeks)
Using the approved design, site architecture, technical brief, and sitemap the project then moves to the development stage. This is where the website gets built in a development environment. There is little client involvement at this stage of the project, but a good portion of the timeline will be required for this stage.
Content Assembly (2 to 4 weeks)
Content assembly involves establishing key messages and calls-to-action, porting over content from your existing site, as well as adding new text that you want to include, editing existing text creating headlines, page titles, captions and text for SEO purposes, headlines, descriptions and tags. This process will overlap with the development stage.
Site testing and review (1 to 2 weeks)
Once the content has been added to the newly developed site it will be made available for testing. This is your opportunity to share the site with the necessary stakeholders for review and feedback. Testing is also conducted during this stage to ensure the site is optimized across multiple modern browsers, screens and mobile devices and ensure the site is performing as it should prior to launch.
Site launch (1 day to 1 week)
Upon approval after testing, the new website will be launched with no interruption to the current site. The launch process can be simple and quick, or can be more complex depending on what is involved with the site content and hosting environment.
Ongoing Care and Maintenance
Once a website has gone live, it is advised to have ongoing care and maintenance in place, in terms of hosting, backup management, uptime monitoring and security. If required a care and maintenance plan can be provided, tailored to your needs. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss the options
