Steps to Follow for an Effective Web Design Process

A website, in my opinion is such a powerful tool. For the person creating it, who decides how the website must be experienced, for the client who has important goals to accomplish and for the end user who finally interacts with the website.

Website Design has a lot of moving parts behind, a lot of different creative teams working in tandem with clients, with processes happening simultaneously. Since the task may seem herculean to begin with, following a pre-defined process will ensure that your project has structure, will stay on track and all teams work towards a common goal. Web design refers to the design of websites.

If we were to define what the most common goals of a website they would be, they would be increasing sales, boosting brand awareness, and building customer loyalty. These goals, studied carefully, should serve as a roadmap for the design and development,  providing a clear direction for visual language, content creation, user experience, and functionality.

Based on a lot of trial and error, these are the steps that I’ve found to follow for an effective website design process. A web design agency is a company that specializes in providing a range of web-related services.

Steps in a Web Design Process

1. Identifying the goal & objective of the website design

2. Understanding the Business

3. Crafting the Brief

4. Researching for Context

5. Creating a Content Structure

6. Crafting a visual language (don’t forget to brief the developer here)

7. Website Design

8. Development

10. Testing and QC

11. Managing the Project

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Web design process video we follow at Everything Design

Step 1: Identifying the goal and objective of the website design

TEAM : Over call / ideally in person with the client team

DURATION : Maximum 3 calls, 1 hour each.

An unavoidable step that must be done at the very beginning of the project, once the project receives the ‘go-ahead’. It’s important to understand why the client decided to create a website and what they plan to achieve with this powerful tool.

The most common goals that I’ve observed at least in the B2B space are -

• They want higher conversions
• They want meaningful leads
• They want the website to be the most important communication tool - reducing the need for multiple calls with the sales team
• They want their website to be a platform where the user can experience their service/product/solution/product
• They want to educative their prospects on their innovative solution, especially if they are doing something novel in the market

First, understand the following -

• What purpose is the website going to solve?
• Who is the target audience for the website?
• How are we going to achieve these goals?. This is where the objectives come in?
• Is the website going to follow a narrative style of communication?
• Is the website going to be purely experiential?
• Is the priority of content on the brand itself or the product/solution/service/platform/tech?

Once these questions are answered, you’re have enough content to move on to the next step.

REFER IMAGE : Take plenty of notes, this will be your fall back when you're ideating on the content strategy, visual concept and anytime you need a refresher on the subject matter.

Poring over existing material

TEAM : With your design and content team

DURATION : 3 days (fast-paced project) | 1 week (medium-paced project)

It’s vital to get a complete debrief/download of all resources from the client’s end. This will also do a decent job of informing you of the foundational information - what the business and its offerings are.  Make sure you receive exisiting pitch decks, sales decks, resources, etc (whitepapers, blogs, articles, etc written by their team). I’ve found that more often that not, the most useful insights about the business and how they talk about themselves come from these documents. You never know what hidden gems of data lie between the unassuming pdf’s.

Understandably, this can seem like a a taxing process, and something that is hard to grasp initially, but is a necessary process that will help you conduct your reasarch in a much more informed manner. As designers, the kind of businesses that the clients belong to might be unheard of, filled with strange jargons.

What helped me initially was looking at this like increasing my knowledge base. Each project that came to me was in a new sector that I was unfamiliar with - consumer insights platform, vendor lifecycle management, contract lifecycle management, digital media in advertising tech, the kind of areas that I would not normally stumble across. So learning about them was not just for the project, but more for me to know more about unfamiliar topics.

And trust me, having conversations when you are decently informed about their industry, helps move the conversation along much more smoothly, and they’re reassured from the get-go, you’re indirectly telling that you’ve put the effort, you’ll continue to do so and that you genuinely care about the work that you’re doing for them.

Step 3: Crafting the Brief

Typically there are a couple of website design briefs that I usually encounter depending on which the brief changes as wella. Website Design  - from scratch, for a company that has no brand and need a complete branding exercise as well. This means, we have more complete control over the look and feel of the website as the design team will be in charge of crafting the brand.b. Website Design for a brand with an existing brand guide - This means, we have to stay within the lines of the brand guide, while intelligently and creatively deciding whether deciding how to use what elements from the brand guide.

1. Whether be it either of the above options, the ideal process to be followed more or less remains the same.

STEP 1 : When creating the brief, the following must be kept in mind, as this makes sure that you and the client are on the same page from the get go.a. What is the primary goal of the website? ( as we had defined with step 1)b. Who is/are the specific target persona?c. Who do you consider benchmarks within your industry? And why?d. What websites (these can be cross-industry) do you consider as benchmarks and why?e. What was the reason why you decided to redesign/design a website for your business?f. What about your current website do you like/not like?

Once you receive the answers to these questions, it is time to understand the business’s offerings/services/products/platform in depth. This is important for the team designing the website because it gives them a holistic understanding of the client’s unique offering/service/solution/product/platform. This helps them design a website that communicates the businesses’s unique features in the best way, that makes sense for your business.

Request a call with the client’s product/engineering team for a quick demo call so that they can take you through the product’s inner workings, giving you much more of a deeper understanding of the product.

Post the call, also request a copy of the figma file for the product’s UI screens. This will help you pre-plan the static frames for the UI screens, in case you are planning short UI screen animations for the website.

Step 4: Researching for Context

For client’s who have the room to cater to a flexible timeline, primary research is always suggested. Speak to as many target users as you can. Understand their primary needs, expectations from the website, what they want to accomplish, what are the common blockers/pain points, what are “good websites” from their POV and why and other questions that are relevant for your background study.

In most website projects that either work towards a launch date or a milestone event, primary research might not be possible. Secondary research is the next best bet. From the client’s earlier answers, you must have a couple of names for direct competitors. Make sure you also do your own research and never forget to look at global benchmarks as well.

Once you have your direct competitors in place, study their key pages - homepage, main product page, resource page and the about page.Couple of pointers to keep in mind -

1. What is the content flow of the page and why?
2. What is the objective of each of the pages?
3. What is the style of the graphics they have used?
4. Have they included any unique functionalities?
5. In terms of communication, how are they speaking about themselves?
6. What language do they use to sell their product/solution/service/platform/tech?

Once your analysis is done, it’s time to jot down your findings and insights from your research.

Findings are specific, quantifiable results from a study, while insights are interpretations of those findings that help explain or solve a problem

• Findings : The results of a study, presented in a clear, concise, and systematic way. Findings are based on direct observations and collected data. They are the empirical evidence that supports the study's conclusions.
• Insights : Interpretations of findings that help explain or solve a problem. Insights are based on connecting multiple findings to reveal underlying patterns and understand the "why" behind a behavior or trend. They are actionable opportunities based on research and business goals.

Insights are often based on sudden realizations about the users or customers from research activities. They can reveal hidden truths, offer fresh perspectives, and inspire action.

Creating a Content Structure

1. What is this product?
2. Is this product meant for me?

If your website hero copy doesn’t answer these questions instantly, you're making visitors work unnecessarily hard. And no one has time for that.

Next, the team lays out all the information they have received and create a detailed site map. This helps the project manager lay out a detailed timeline as another step that ensures that you and the project team are on the same page. Once the dates and the deliverables are decided, its time to finally kick start the project with gusto!

The content team get busy at work creating content structures/information architecture - basically, what information goes where, in what order, and what objective is that information addressing. This helps decide the flow of information beforehand, so content writing has a pre-defined structure to begin with.

PRO TIP : Before crafting the content structure, first put down a script. Yes, a script, I know it sounds strange, but this method works.The script is basically a general user journey mapped out with expected user behaviour, and how the website’s content structure can cater to their questions/apprehensions. Penning this down, helps create a content struture that is well thought out.

Refer the image : Portion of the script of the homepage. ‘V’ represents Website Visitor and ‘NE’ represents ‘NimbleEdge’, a client of ours. The script details out the common questions/queries a visitor may have when first visiting the website.

Crafting a visual language (don’t forget to brief the developer here)

Now that all your fundamentals are sorted, it’s time to jump into the visual magic. If your timeline is rather crunched, it’s best to refer the brand book (if the brand does have one), and optimise the existing elements to create a strong visual language, that can easily be translated across all web elements.

Refer the image : Image 1 contains the limited brand elements we received from the client

Image 2 contains how three very different looking visual interpretations were done with the brand elements.

The exercise of crafting a visual route might seem like an extra step in the process of crafting a website but is absolutely necessary for the clients and you to be on the same page before the actual design of the web pages start. If both teams are aligned on the visual language, which is usually the biggest point of contention in website design projects, it helps the rest of the project flow much more smoothly.

Once the client is aligned with the visual language, immediately debrief your development team so that they can start doing research, r&d and testing of some of your complex concepts/animations. This helps speeden up the dev process as well.

Content Creation

While the designers are ideating and brainstorming ways to enrich the website experience from a functional POV, the content team get onto the most important bit ; crafting the copy in the voice of the brand, keeping the messaging at the heart of it all.

Website Messaging : A crucial exercise to map out exactly what the business is, who is it for and what is unique about. Once these pointers are penned down in clear, concise words, the content team can then go on to craft copy for any touchpoint, while keeping the core message consistent and unified.

https://mailchimp.com/resources/messaging-strategy/ - basics of getting started on website messaging strategy.

https://www.everything.design/blog/best-practices-b2b-website-messaging - detailed guide for B2B website messaging

Website Design

We’re finally at the point of almost no return. With the copy and the visual language in place, it’s time to get onto the most important page - the homepage, the make or break place.

Before jumping into the homepage design, put down your detailed style guide, so that your develper can start mapping it out on their web development software parallely.

https://webflow.com/blog/website-style-guide - a basic ‘how-to’ on how to craft a styleguide.

Now coming to the homepage,

As a designer, this is where you need to intelligently bring all your elements from your visual language onto the page to make cohesive sense. This is where you need to test layouts to discern what works best with the content, context and visual elements.

For a client, this is the first fully crafted outcome they’re seeing since the kickstart of the project. The design plus the copy coming together to create a seamless page.

For the end user, this page needs to make a great first impression. Based on what only what they scan, see or read will they decide to engage further. Any UX issue or jargon filled communication or glitch in the website animations, and they immediately have a negative experience and its hard to come back from that. The user could also lose interest, as the attention span is only about 7 seconds on a website.

So yeah, it is an important page.

REFER IMAGE : Where layout explorations are done ranging from simple to experimental to gauge what best works with the visual tone of the website. This experimentation is crucial at this stage because whatever layout style you decide on now, is what you will carry through and through in the rest of the pages.

Couple of things to keep in mind while designing -

1. Keep the page easily scannable - this is only established through clear hierarchy. Keep your important information crisp and compelling and as your H1, H2 or H3. (the bigger sizes make sure people read it)
2. Include white space - Don’t cram your layouts with chunky content and clunky visuals. Think and then rethink whether the section actually requires a graphic. If the section is already content heavy, maybe try represenating the content in a different way.
3. Make sure there is a logical flow of content. The information that your prospects/target audience is looking for needs to be higher up in the page. Upto 70% do not scroll to the bottom of the page. 50% rarely cross the mid-mark. So make sure all the ‘need-to-know’ information is upfront in a clear manner
4. Make sure the visuals are uniform - Use consistent typopgrahy relationshiops across the website, use standard padding and margin, do not deviate from your visual language

The designed web page is then presented to the client. Once approved, the rest of the pages are churned out relatively smoother, unless a specific page requires a very different layout or unique functionality that requires R&D.

As each page is designed and approved from the client, handover the files to the development team immediately. Couple of pointers to keep in mind when doing the handover -

1. make sure the page is designed in autolayout (if figma is used)
2. make sure all states of the button are mapped out (inactive, hover and active)
3. make sure to debrief them about specific animations with detailed sketches or references.

Animations are also part of the web design process

The most widely-used and leveraged method to make your website “pop” or “stand out” or to be said simply, be engaging, is animations! Either in the form of page/section loading animations, micro interactions, or graphics that are animated, all of these graphics in movement bump up your user engagement by a huge degree. As we all know, people prefer to consume content in the easiest method, i.e visual media. They would choose to watch a 4 min animated explainer video about the business, its process or its product than read through an entire page of information.

REFER IMAGE : Map out all the key frame animations with detailed descriptions of the transitions between frames and animations within each frame. If you have a style of animation in mind, make sure you send them to the animation team beforehand so they can text the viability.

Development : From figma file to a real website

The most important step, that is Development has already started. Something I’ve heard and I truly believe in,  a website is only as good as the developed version. No one cares what how beautiful your figma files are.

As an end-to-end, web design agency, we pride ourselves on having an in-house development team, professionaly partnered with Webflow. The webflow team first start with a styleguide, then go on to develop the website on Webflow as they see it on Figma (which we use to design the website)

Testing and QC

One of the most easily overlooked yet the most important step which is the QC and QA of the website, testing responsiveness across screen sizes, testing the website across browsers.

Once the vigorous QC is done from each team, the development, design and content, the website process comes to an almost close.

Managing the Web Design Project

Not really a step in the chronological fashion, a team that any kind of project cannot do without, especially a website project that involves facets of so many teams, requires proper resource and client management team. They put out fires before there are even fires, they see the red flags. The process of handover across departments is only as smooth as the project management behind the scenes making sure everything flows smoothly.

Why is it important to know the website design process steps?

Understanding the steps in the website design process is essential because it ensures a structured approach to creating a functional, user-centered, and visually appealing site. Each step—from research and planning to wireframing, design, development, testing, and launch—plays a crucial role in aligning the site with business goals and user expectations. A clear process minimizes risks, allows for collaborative input, and helps teams anticipate challenges, leading to a smoother workflow and a more effective final product. This knowledge not only enhances the quality of the website but also helps optimize resources, time, and budget.

Conclusion

The web design process is a collaboration between the client and you, ensuring each stage is completed thoroughly to produce a website that meets expectations and delivers results. Understanding this process helps both sides work together smoothly, avoid delays, and ensure a successful launch. With this well-structured workflow, Everything Design is committed to creating websites by following these web design process steps that drive business success.