Creating a website is a complex and detailed task. For the site to be easy and good for the visitor, there is a lot of planning and hard work behind the scenes. So, we're going to show you a sequence of processes that we've followed and perfected for about 10 years to ensure that the end result meets your goals, whether it's impressing visitors, warming up the commercial, selling, among others.

1. Planning

To know the way, it is very important to know where you want to go, so the first step is to understand the purpose of the website. 

For example, institutional companies usually need a website that has a branding impact and after browsing the site, the visitor will have a better impression of the company and this will generate affinity to strengthen business. For this type of audience there is a specific content and navigation sequence.

For the institutional website to be successful and generate credibility, it is necessary in the planning phase to think of good photos, videos, testimonials from clients that are a case of success, institutional texts that express the mission, vision and values ​​of the organization and objective description of the products, services and their respective advantages.

When thinking about an e-commerce, for example, the needs are different. It is necessary to focus on the product catalog (quality of photos, descriptions and display of products), stock control, integration between systems, payment methods, logistics and platform so that the purchase is made easily.

In planning, you also need to think about how the site will be accessed, what your domain will be, use of QRCode for access or backlinks from other sites. There are several ways to access the website and this phase involves planning. The domain is an essential item for the website, however, access via Google searches or via camera also needs to be considered, since it directly influences what is expected when arriving at the site.

It is very important to understand this initial phase to start separating the content itself and this is the next step.

2 - Content collection

Good content is fundamental to the success of the website, after all, it is the message that will impact the visitor and generate the relationship between the visitor and the company.

The content involves textual work, which must have grammatical quality and convey the message in an objective and articulated way. It is recommended to have a review process and that the editing itself is carried out in programs that offer correction tools.

Still on the texts, it is important that they speak the language of the visitor, this item not only increases the acceptance of the website by the visitor but also collaborates with SEO (appearing more in Google and searches) because your website is in accordance with the way people are looking for. For example: Imagine a site that sells home cleaning products - people search for "car shampoo" much more than "car detergent", so using the first term will get the site more results than using the second.

Another very important item that will generate design consistency between the website and the company is the visual identity, normally composed of a brand manual, logo, graphic material already used, photos and videos. The quality of this material will directly influence whether the site has a pleasant look or not, as the material is only adapted for the web.

In addition, content organization is also very important, for example, organizing the content of each page in folders, images with good resolution, separating website texts from texts with page design ideas are a great way to work as a team. , especially if the material is available in the cloud for easy access.

With the objective and content in hand, the prototyping begins.

3. Design and Layout

In this stage begins the transformation of the content and abstraction of the objectives in a real prototype converted with the characteristics of the web.

It is important that all alterations, transformations and design are carried out at this stage of the project, because here the prototype is still plastic to carry out the necessary changes.

Here at Eco Webdesign, for example, we use Adobe XD to design the layout and talk to the client about changes in general.

It is important to pay attention to some fundamental items of the prototype, which are:

• Responsiveness: How the website responds in the most varied dimensions of screens;

• Navigation flow: Convenience to navigate between pages;

• CTA: From the English call to action, it deals with the triggers for the visitor to perform an important action, such as asking for a quote;

• Visual identity of the interface: Components such as buttons, messages, texts, titles, boxes, forms, among others, need to be in line with the company's brand;

Once the prototype is consistent, decoding begins.

4. Encoding

Coding involves the technical processes to enable the site's functionality, from daily operation and updates to its overall good functioning.

A good website needs to meet criteria that mainly involve:

• Guarantee of good functioning in different browsers;

• Serve the visitor regardless of the size of the screen of their device, whether TV, cell phone, tablet or computer;

• Pass the standards of search engines such as Google's WebVitals;

• Have a CMS, which stands for content management system, that makes it easy to edit content and make changes in general;

• Is correctly sized to meet different workloads and scalable;

It is very important to be aware of trends as the web is always changing. So it is essential to follow the matter in highly credible bodies, such as Nic.br.

At the end of coding, the prototype, which was previously a simple image, can now be tested with the fundamental resources of the web, such as navigating between pages, seeing animations, testing forms and operating the site in the control panel.

This step needs a lot of testing, it is extremely important that the site goes through a battery of tests on different devices and browsers, to ensure that customers will mostly have a good experience, regardless of the technology used to access it.

Once the tests and changes are finished, the publication work begins.

5. Publication

It is a common mistake to think that the coded website is ready, in fact it is just the beginning of its online life cycle. Here at Eco Webdesign we carry out a series of processes in the publication and we will expose some important items:

• Check if the site is really fast and approved in WebVitals;

• New battery of tests to certify that the site works perfectly in the definitive domain;

• Test sending and receiving messages in general, in addition to other specific features of the website;

• Install and check the operation of marketing tracking tools, for example: Google TagManager, Google Analytics, Google Search Console;

• Still on follow-up and marketing, we use Interago's own tool to track visits and contact receipts to automatically send to our customers' Whatsapp every month;

• Check if the site is presentable when shared on Facebook, Whatsapp, email, among other social networks or sharing tools;

In addition, it is important to always read and reread the website content to ensure that everything is ok and, above all, to have special and fast support to validate possible errors found by visitors, in case you still have any problems after the tests, and this is the next item.

6. Maintenance and continuous improvement

The online website has a very rich data collection that allows the continuous improvement of the website. It is possible to understand the paths that the visitor is taking, favorite pages, how they are appearing on Google, among many others. It is very important that corrections and changes are made quickly for the site to have continuous growth. It is very important to generate new content after the site is launched, in addition to thinking about opportunities to expand it and, after a period, to plan a new version based on the acquired content.

The website with continuous improvement generates more visits, receipt of contacts and ROI from campaigns in Google Ads or other dissemination channels.

If you need more information on how to plan a website, you can contact our team to clear all your doubts and start off on the right foot in a project that can transform your company. Thanks for reading.