The website-making process

Making a new website can be an intimidating task filled with unknowns, and often goes hand-in-hand with the rest of your business marketing plan.

About the process

There's a lot that goes into building a website, especially if your company is just getting started. On this page, we've broken down the process from start to finish to get you started on your road to success with your website.

This step-by-step guide should help you get started quickly and efficiently, as well as equip you with the necessary knowledge to make your own amazing websites.

This guide covers the entire website-making process for a new business. Click a link below to jump ahead if you've already started!

Setting up your brand

Branding is an important aspect of business marketing. Business branding is used to generate consumer interest in a company's goods and services. It creates a positive image in the consumer's mind by differentiating your company from its competitors. Branding has become increasingly important as companies compete globally with others in their industry.

There are many elements that go into how customers perceive your company, and it can mean the difference between a customer remembering your company or forgetting who you are.

Identify your target market

Accurately identifying your target market and understanding their needs is one of the most important components of a successful business. If you can identify who you are targeting and how you can service them, you are well on your way to making your business a success.

By understanding who your customers are and how they behave, you can identify marketing methods, advertising campaigns and customer service strategies that will resonate with your audience. This insight will enable you to develop an effective digital marketing strategy and thrive in the online marketplace.

Your target market demographics will also directly influence your brand, including aspects like logo design and colors.

Brand design

Your business logo, colors, and typography is an extension of your brand. It represents your company’s values, mission and philosophy.

Design elements that we can help you create include:

Logo
Color palette
Typography
Brand "voice"
Marketing copy
Brand imagery

Brand voice and marketing copy

Every brand has a "voice" that represents your company's personality. This voice should be used consistently across your marketing materials, including videos and written copy.

Is your brand friendly and personable? Down-to-earth and professional? Or something else altogether? Deciding your brand's voice ties in with all the other branding decisions you have made, and forms part of your brand's unique persona.

Once you've chosen your brand's voice, we can work together with a professional copywriter to develop marketing copy. "Copy" in this context refers to written snippets and paragraphs that can be used on your website, product descriptions, brochures, etc.

Marketing assets

It's a good idea to make sure your brand matches your website and marketing materials. For example, if you want to use social media and want to appear professional, it's helpful to have matching colors and fonts across all your materials so that you don't confuse potential customers.

Physical marketing materials

At this point you have your brand and foundational materials prepared, and you're ready to hit the ground running!

Depending on your specific business needs, we can prepare and print materials such as:

Business cards
Brochures
Letterhead for invoices, and legal docs
Envelopes, branded checks

Social media presence

Using your established logo and brand assets, we setup branded social media pages on the platforms that make the best strategic sense for your business.

Being active on social media helps let people know about your business, what you do and why you are a good fit for them.

Placeholder website

A cornerstone strategy of modern business marketing strategy is to use your marketing channels to drive leads onto your website, where you can then qualify and convert the leads into new customers.

While your new website begins the design and development process, we can setup a branded placeholder website in the meantime. Leads from your physical and social media marketing efforts can then be directed to this page for the time being, which will work great for your first clients as you start out.

Website planning

Once you have your logos, branding, and marketing materials sorted out, we can proceed to the website planning phase.

We'll work together to answer questions like:

What type of website is needed?
How many webpages should be setup?
Choosing a content management platform
What budget level fits your company's current and future needs?

Content Management System

A content management system ("CMS") unlocks the ability for your in-house staff to freely edit your website pages and content at any time.

Our new clients frequently ask about what content management system ("CMS") is right for their business. We're happy to work with your company to find the best fit for your needs. Some common frameworks we've implemented in the past are:

WordPress
Contentful
Prismic
CraftCMS

Website budget

From large enterprises looking to expand and update their digital presence, to brand-new startups just getting started, our team at Decimis is happy to work with projects of all sizes. We have no required minimum or maximum project size.

As a general ballpark, most of our client's projects land in the $10,000 - $20,000 range. We do take on many small projects below $1,000 as well.

Website design

When making a new website, most clients tend to focus on the Website Design phase. It's fun to imagine what your new website will look like!

The interviews will help you to answer questions about how your website should be setup; what content should be first on the page? Where should the call to action buttons be located? How many menu items should be listed in your website header?

User interviews

A vital first step to creating a custom website design is to start by interviewing your customers. Users have different needs and expectations for the site design depending on a variety of factors.

Wireframes

The next step in the design process is making wireframes of the user interface (UI). This step is frequently combined with the user interview process to help fine-tune the website design based on user feedback.

Final mockups

Once the wireframes are finalized, the designers will proceed with designing a full-fidelity mockup of your website. The results of this stage are HD images that represent your full website design, including your brand colors, example content, and images.

Web development

Once the design is finalized, it's time to breathe life into your new website! Your branding and web design are exciting, but nothing works - and your website doesn't exist - without code to make it all interactive for your business and customers.

Platform architecture

As mentioned earlier, the CMS you choose has a big impact on the development phase of the project.

Backend scaffolding

The "Backend" of a website represents the code behind-the-scenes that makes your website run. It's invisible to anyone who visits your website, but represents the critical infrastructure that supports the site.

Frontend website foundation

Next up is the foundation of the frontend of the website. This includes the overall page structure and webpage styling needed to make your website match the mockups from the website design phase.

Page components

Once the backend and frontend foundation are ready, work can begin on the individual page components. A component represents a reusable page block like a Photo, Text Block, or Contact Form.

Custom integrations

Does your business use a CRM like Salesforce? Or a newsletter service such as MailChimp? Once the rest of the website is built, we can go the extra mile and integrate third-party services directly into your website!

Website polish

Finally, the web developers will polish everything up in your new website codebase. From SEO (search engine optimization) and page loading speed, to ADA compliance (website accessibility), there are many items to be verified and checked for quality assurance before we launch your new site.

Content development

In the meantime, while your website is being developed, we will also be working closely with you on the Content Development. A well-programmed and beautiful website is great, but without content it's just an empty shell!

Research

Imagery

Videos

Page building

Website launch

Staff training

Ongoing maintenance

Conclusion

Our team loves helping companies like yours to plan their web presence. Contact us today for a free no-commitment consultation!