Here are 5 basic website development tips:

1. Planning
Long before the design begins, you should take great care to plan out a new website.  It starts with your company’s needs and your business objectives.  Do you really know what the website is suppose to do for you?  Some companies make the mistake of putting too much information on the home pages.  Other businesses don’t mention enough on the home pages.

Take a look at your competition.  Explore websites in other industries.  You can learn a lot just by keeping an open mind.  It’s OK to dream.  Make a big list of ideas.  At some point, you’ll need to start thinking about your budget.  What you plan to do with the website will have a big impact on the total cost.  Your design choices, including the navigation, can influence the budget.

2. The Map.

When you’re confident about what you need and what you can afford, then create a map of your website.  Some developers essentially create a story outlining the website in a series of boxes connected by different lines to illustrate the relationship of each page to other pages.  Think of this is the skeleton. Colors and all of the web design elements aren’t needed at this point.

3. Basic Design.

Once you know what you need, it’s best to start the website off with a static design – no programming. Why? It doesn’t make any sense to program a website until you’ve signed off on the design. It can be very costly to design and program a website only to change your mind and need to update the website design as well as the programming.

4. Programming.

After you decide on a design, the programming can kick in. The source code should comply with basic standards, common resolutions and the most popular Internet browsers.

5. Time to Launch.

If you like the final product, it’s time to launch it so you can promote the heck out of it – with customers, vendors, and prospects.

Get other website development tips.