The process of website design or development involves a number of important steps. Most professional Web design companies or web developers use a common process when building a website. The process includes planning through to ongoing maintenance of the website.

Depending on the time and resources available to you, you may choose to allocate the amount of time you spend on each step.

1. Identify your Goal

Knowing your goal will help you to establish what you have set out to achieve and will allow you to identify the market you and your target audience. This in turn will help you focus your content. Setting out your Goals will also help you measure your performance.

2. Create a plan

While it may be tempting to start designing the graphics straightway, if you want to build a successful website, it is important to start with a plan.  Although information architecture and structure of your website are improtant parts of yourr plan, you should start with a high level plan first.

Key elements of your plan should include:

* Information architecture

* structure of your website (Including list of pages)

* Technology to be used (Use of open source platforms like Joomla, WordPress or Magento are a popular choice)

3. Design/Development phase

The design phase should only start once your plan is in place. This is where you can use your design and creative skills. most of us start to have fun – with the design phase of the project. It is recommended to start with a Wireframe model of the design first before starting the graphics. A wireframe will give you an idea of the design elements to use.

There are many open source content management systems and shopping cart platforms that you can use depending on your needs.

4. Create your Website Content

The importance of content has increased with time. what people come to your site for. Toady, content is the most important part of your website. It includes text and media. It not advisable to leave the content for the end.

You should look for:

5. Test and Refine your Website

Testing your website is critical in all stages. Your will need to review your design and test your functionality regularly during the development phase. Similarly, you will need t review your content and code to ensure it is error free. Towards the end you will need to conduct browser testing and ensure the code validates and conforms to relevant standards.

6. Set-up Web-hosting

Once the design and content is ready, you will need to upload your website to the web-hosting server.

7. Optimise the website

You will need to ensure your website has been optimised for search engines before you launch the website.

Key steps include:

• Research and identify your keywords
• Apply correct Meta Tags
• Ensure keywords are appropriately represented in image ALT Tags, Headings, Anchor text of links
• SEO friendly page names
• Ensure there is a Sitemap
• Ensure fast load time

8. Marketing and Promotion

A majority of the websites are not marketed enough. If you want your website to be successful and people to visit, you will need to promote your website. If you have limited funds, you can use social media and organic methods to promote your website on search engines in order to attract visitors.

9. Measure the performance of your website

There are many tools available to measure the performance of your website. Google analytics provides detailed analysis of your visitors including keywords and search terms. Google Webmaster tools on the other hand provide information on the general performance issues and areas for improvement. Other sources such as Alexa.com provide useful site information and growth trends together with valuable information on your competitors.

10. Maintain and improve your Website

To be successful and offer value to your users, your website will need to continuously evolve and change. You will need to add new, fresh content regularly. You may need to tweak the website or offer additional features from time to time. You will also need to apply changes continuously based on trends and ongoing analysis of your website statistics or recommendations offered by Google Webmaster and other tools.