Many clients come to us after a difficult experience with a previous provider: missed deadlines, a result that looked nothing like what was promised, extra invoices along the way. Most of these problems come from a lack of transparency about what actually happens while a site is being built. Here's the process as it should unfold.
Phase 1: Discovery (1 to 2 weeks)
Before designing anything, a good provider works to understand your business, your customers, your goals and your competition. This phase produces a scoping document: who your target users are, what pages the site needs, what content you'll put on it, and what criteria will define the project's success.
If your provider sends you a mock-up without this phase, that's a red flag.
Phase 2: Architecture and design (2 to 4 weeks)
The architecture defines the structure of the site: which pages, in what order, and how they link together. Then comes the design, first in greyscale (wireframes) to validate the structure, then in colour to validate the visual identity. Each stage should be presented to you for sign-off before moving on to the next.
Phase 3: Development (3 to 8 weeks depending on complexity)
Development turns the approved mock-ups into working web pages. It's the longest stage, and the hardest to picture from the outside. A good provider shares regular previews, not a single deliverable at the end. You should be able to test a work-in-progress version on a staging environment.
Phase 4: Content and testing (1 to 2 weeks)
The copy, images and videos need to be added and tested across every kind of device and browser. This phase is often underestimated, and it's where a lot of projects fall behind, usually because the content wasn't ready on the client's side.
Get your content ready before development begins. It's one of the best ways to avoid delays.
Phase 5: Launch and follow-up
Going live isn't the end of the project, it's the beginning. A good provider stays on hand in the days after launch, trains your team to manage the content, and remains available to fix any issues that crop up in production.
A well-run project holds no nasty surprises. If your provider can't clearly explain what you'll be getting, when, and how you'll be involved at each stage, find someone else.