Website development

A good website is so fast that you don’t notice it loading, it looks breathtaking and works like the best device, one that is a pleasure to use. The experience should be just as good on smartphones, computers and tablets. The driving force of every website is its CMS, which powers the whole site with content.

Throughout the development of the internet, websites have played a leading role for every business as an independent, dedicated channel of communication with customers and partners. The process of designing and launching a website should be clear and transparent, because the key to success is close collaboration and a shared understanding of the project.

How we prepare a website

Preparation time: 30 to 60 days

Difficulty level: easy

Ingredients:

• A 60-minute conversation about the project: gathering requirements, defining goals, competitor analysis*
• Functional wireframes
• Website UI/UX designs
• Visual designs for each screen of the website
• A custom HTML/CSS template based on the Bootstrap framework
• The WordPress content management system
• Texts, photos and videos as content for the website

* this can be a video call, a phone call or email correspondence

The process of building a professional website

While talking with a client about their new website, our company prepares a set of inspirations and the technological options available. We listen carefully to our client’s requirements, expectations and preferences. Based on the collected materials, the team creates a functional wireframe that shows the structure of the website, the flow of information and the key features.

The first phase of building a website

Using the functional wireframes and the meeting notes, our designer starts creating the UI/UX designs of the website. They are then enriched with graphics and a suitable presentation, and sent to the client for review and approval. Most designs are usually approved with only minor comments, and once these are applied we can move on to the development phase.

A lot happens on the technical side during the development phase. We move from static designs to something alive: responsive, dynamic and scalable. The first step is coding the templates in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which we call “frontend development”. This part of building a website is what we can see in a web browser, where the properly coded template can already be run.

The second phase of building a website

The second phase, called “backend development”, connects the server with the previously created HTML template using further technical tools: the PHP language, the MySQL database and WordPress, which acts as the intermediary between all the essential parts of the website: the template, the content and its presentation online. We cannot forget the server, known as the hosting service, without which the website would not be available online.

Let us stop for a moment and say more about WordPress. Over the years we have learned that a professionally built WordPress website has the simplest possible structure based on dedicated templates, uses as many native features as possible and keeps ready-made plugins to the necessary minimum. We only use them when we really have to. WordPress releases a new version roughly once a month, and these are often critical security updates. By relying on native WordPress features, we avoid problems with updates. Building such a website, however, requires PHP and MySQL development knowledge and experience, which we have.

Our project is almost at the finish line, but now the materials that should have been prepared earlier play an important role. The most convenient way to prepare website content is to organise it by section and create text files, downloadable files and photos for each of them. With well-prepared materials, publishing them in the content management system is quick and easy: you just enter the content into the right fields and you are done. And what if there is a lot of material and adding it would take a long time? No problem. Scripts come into play and create subpages in bulk from structured materials.

The third and final stage of building a website

In theory, our website is now ready to be published and join the global network of internet resources. In practice, however, a website usually needs optimisation, both for Google search and SEO and for loading speed. The materials prepared for a website are often too large or in the wrong formats, which can make the site load more slowly for the end user, and in our field that is considered a serious mistake that has to be fixed. Security matters too: WordPress, its plugins and the hosting environment all need to be updated regularly.

If you would like us to build a new professional website for you or your company following this recipe, just get in touch and ask us for a quote.

Why choose Okinet to build your website?

We are an experienced company from Wrocław, Poland, building websites with a unique design that are SEO-optimised, fast and responsive. We treat our clients as partners and take the time to understand their expectations. As a result, we create interactive websites that match what our clients want, follow Google’s guidelines and reflect the latest visual trends.