1. Planning & Strategy
We start by understanding your business goals, target audience, and what you want visitors to do on your site. We map out the site structure, plan the user journey, and identify all the features you'll need. This includes deciding on pages, navigation, forms, and any special functionality like online payments or booking systems.
2. Design & User Experience
We create visual mockups showing exactly how your site will look and work. This includes choosing colors, fonts, layouts, and designing every page. We make sure it's intuitive to navigate, looks great on phones and tablets, and guides visitors toward taking action. You'll review and approve the design before we start building.
3. Domain Registration
Your domain name (like yourbusiness.com) is your website's address on the internet. We help you choose and register the perfect domain name, or we can set up one you already own. This typically costs $10-15 per year and is registered through a domain registrar.
4. Hosting Setup
Hosting is where your website files live on the internet. We set up a hosting account with a reliable provider and configure it for optimal performance. This typically costs $10-20 per month and includes server space, bandwidth, and automatic backups. We set this up early so we can test your site in a real environment as we build it.
5. Continuous Integration & Deployment
We set up automated systems that handle testing and updates for your website. This system automatically checks that everything works correctly whenever we make changes, and will deploy updates smoothly. We configure this during development so it's ready to use from the start.
6. Frontend Development
This is where we build the actual website that visitors see and use. We create all the pages, design how everything looks, and add interactive features like buttons, forms, and animations. Everything is built to load quickly and work perfectly whether someone visits on their phone, tablet, or computer.
7. Backend & Functionality
For features like contact forms, online payments, or data storage, we set up the server-side systems that make everything work. This includes connecting forms to email services, integrating payment processors, setting up databases if needed, and creating automated workflows. All of this happens securely behind the scenes.
8. Performance Optimization
We optimize your site to load as fast as possible. This includes compressing images, minifying code, enabling caching, and using a content delivery network (CDN) to serve files from locations close to your visitors. We work on this throughout development and do a final optimization pass before launch. Fast-loading sites rank better in search engines and provide a better user experience.
9. SEO Setup
We optimize your site so search engines can find and understand it. This includes writing proper page titles and descriptions, adding structured data markup, creating an XML sitemap, setting up proper heading structure, and ensuring your site is mobile-friendly. We work on SEO throughout development and complete the final setup before launch, including submitting your site to search engines so they can index it.
10. DNS Configuration
DNS (Domain Name System) is like the internet's phone book. It connects your domain name to your hosting server. We configure the DNS records so when someone types your domain name, they're directed to your website. This involves setting up the necessary records to make everything work properly.
11. SSL Certificate
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypts the connection between your website and visitors' browsers. This is what makes your site show "https://" instead of "http://" and displays a padlock icon. It's essential for security and SEO. We set up SSL certificates that automatically renew.
12. Testing & Quality Assurance
Before launch, we thoroughly test everything. We check that all pages load correctly, forms work properly, links go to the right places, and the site looks perfect on phones, tablets, and computers. We test in different browsers and fix any issues we find.
13. Analytics & Monitoring
We set up analytics and monitoring so you can see how many people visit your site, which pages they view, and how they found you. We also set up monitoring to alert us if your site goes down or has performance issues, so we can fix problems quickly. We configure this before launch so it starts tracking from day one.
14. Deployment
Deployment is the process of uploading your website files to the hosting server and making it live on the internet. We use modern deployment tools that ensure your site goes live smoothly and reliably. Once deployed, your site is accessible to visitors around the world.
15. Ongoing Maintenance
After launch, websites need regular care to stay secure, fast, and up to date. We handle software updates, fix any issues that come up, add new content when you need it, make design adjustments, and keep an eye on how everything is performing. All of our packages include maintenance for a period of time after launch. If you want ongoing support beyond that, we offer flexible plans to keep your site running smoothly.
