Journey of a new website: starting development

In our short guide on getting your new website, we have covered so far putting together content, deciding on design direction and creating functional specification. After all these are sorted, you can continue to the next step: starting development.

If you haven’t decided so far, you should determine which agency will be doing the website development for you. The naked truth is that, in most cases, the designated agency will be either doing this preparation for you or helping you do it. In rare circumstances, the Client will do all of those steps before deciding on a web development agency. If you are like most Clients, you will be very close to deciding who will be your development agency. In that case, you are ready to proceed to the next step.

Most agencies will be happy if you hand them over a complete project for your new website. On the other hand, some agencies could have some sort of their own questionnaire for doing new website projects. In most cases, you will reuse 95% of the content, design and functional specs you have already created.

Defining all key aspects

The next crucial step is defining all aspects of your new website: conditions, timelines, deliverables and last, but not least, financials. Once you define all of those important bits, you are ready to go. The rule of thumb is to keep an eye on the development process through access to the development environment of the web development agency of your choice. An alternative method, if you are experienced enough and have a technical background, is to keep an eye on agencies’ GitHub, Bitbucket, or similar repository systems. You will be able to see all the code changes once the developer pushes them, but you won’t be able to visually see your new website unless you deploy it somewhere.

Keep an eye on our blog for the next step in creating your new website: progress tracking.