The process of developing a website can be divided into different life cycle phases. This process oriented approach helps the web developers to articulate information to their clients. Most web development company follow the web development life cycle as 6 standard steps like such as
1) Website Requirement and Analysis
You need to define the purpose of your website and audience information. You have to determine some important attributes of your target population like their age group, gender, profession, income level, personality etc. This information will help you to understand what they exactly need, how the website will help them. According to that you can add functionality in the website. You have to prepare the the complete work plan, what is the hardware and software requirement, cost and manpower associated with the project etc. The most important thing is the project should be economically, legally, technologically and operationally feasible.
2) Specification Building
Generally, specifications are determined by covering each element of the requirement. Then you need to develop use cases that defines user actions – what the user will do step by step. Like, he will visit the homepage first, then he will go to product information pages. For example, if any website is offering cosmetics sale, it should feature information like the variety of products, their use, which product is suitable for which skin etc so that if any customer is looking for eye cosmetics she can easily find the product information. List of pictures, prices , how to do the payment , shipping time everything should be there in the website. Once you have identified what you will need and what the user will need, then you can easily start building the website.
3) Website Design
and Development
Client approval should be taken on your design plan. You can build three or four rough design template and show it to your customer. Once he finalizes the home page design, you can proceed to design the secondary pages. There may be lots of changes or suggestions from customer side. You should deploy all the changes before proceeding to the next level. Database team need to understand the requirements and develop the database with all the data structures. Coding team should generate necessary testing plans as well as technical documentation. It is important to communicate time to time with the client regarding the work progress.
4) Testing
You have to make sure that each and every section is running separately. There are certain testing tools as well as some online testing tools are available which can help the testers to test their applications. After doing all the testing a live testing is necessary for your website. Bugs should be fixed on priority basis. After uploading the site, there should be a complete testing.
5) Marketing
Once your website is ready to be available in public you can do the promotional activities through online communities and other websites. You should make your website more visible through on page and off page optimization. Actually this site promotion is an ongoing activity what you can do time to time. If you want you can also go for pay per click and paid submissions with additional cost. Then you will be able to achieve your targeted traffic and to improve sales.
6) Maintenance and Updating
Once your website is operational you have to do content management, technical maintenance, site traffic report analysis etc. on a regular basis. The need of your target customers can change with time. So you need to keep your website up to date. Based on market research you can gather customer needs and feedback. Then you have to improve your website with the help of new technologies.