Have you made a promise to a client and couldn’t keep it? Sure you did. It happens to everyone. I noticed though that when it comes to design for web, many graphic designers, guided by their professional experience so far (with print) tend to make a serious mistake and underestimate the time involved to build a site. Underpromise but also underdeliver as well, that’s never a good combination.
The problem really is that it is hard to estimate the time required to complete such a project, especially without a much of experience. If I ask any of my colleagues-designers how long does it take them to create a specific brochure, they most likely will know at least an approx. time.
When I am asked by my colleagues and clients about the time involved in creating a website though, all I can say is that it is a long process and unlike a common belief it doesn’t happen in a day.
So instead of trying to find the answer to that question I decided to shortlist some main steps involved in creating a website. I deliberately skipped few steps, mainly ones relating to website’s promotion as they usually happen after the site was handed over, although still form part of the creation process. But as said, we don’t need to discuss them right now.
Step 1. Research
This step involves finding out as much as possible about the client, why they need a website and what is the purpose of this site. Another thing to research is the client’s industry and competition. And in order to do this right a designer needs to spend some time with the client, on meetings and phone. And do a bit of homework too.
Step 2. Designing the Structure
Before any sketches can be created a designer needs to plan how the website is going to work. He needs to design the whole navigation (ideally create a flow chart for it). Then once that’s done it should be tested by running it by other people. Just to see if it’s not going to be confusing to a visitor.
Step 3. Finding Out Technical Requirements
Another step is to figure out technical requirements for the site. Will it be a static site or powered by a Content Management System. If so, which system would be used? What are it’s limitations and what are design restrictions?
Also, if it’s a CMS site, navigation and site structure has to be prepared for that. (I wrote more about it in my previous article)
Step 4. Brainstorming ideas and creating artwork.
Once all the research is research done and the structure worked out it’s time to get some ideas together. This step, as you probably already know may take a considerable amount of time. It usually begins with many sketches and slowly builds it’s way to the one worth developing further.
Step 5. Design testing and proofing with the client
Design in itself is brilliant but if it doesn’t work there is no point in using it really. Therefore the artwork should be reviewed and tested. Ideally some basic usability report should be written for it as well. This doesn’t cost much and may help a lot with finding out some potential problems before the site goes for coding.
Step 6. Coding
Once the artwork is approved it now needs to be turned into a working code. If the site is a static one, all pages will be coded in with all content on them already. If this is a CMS site though, all templates that are used to create pages from the CMS will be created and upon their approval the system will be applied to them.
Step 7. Usability testing
At this stage a working version of the site is being tested on real users to see if it’s easy to use and if users have no problems finding the information on it. This usually doesn’t take much time but results of those tests may affect the next and final step of the process and time involved in completing it.
Step 8. Revisions and putting the site live
Once all usability testing report is back it is time to make a decision which of the recommendations should be implemented at this stage, those are then corrected on the site and after a final content population the site is ready to go live.
There are other elements in each step but my point here was not to list them all. Rather to show how complicated the process is and that it simply has to take a considerable amount of time.
And of course, the larger the website, the longer each of those steps takes to complete.