What Goes Into Building a Website?
What You Need to Know Before Hiring Someone to Build Your Website
Do you know what goes into building a website? A lot!
Your website is your virtual storefront, your digital salesperson and your home on the internet.
It’s not just there to legitimize your business, look pretty or sound clever. It has a bigger job to do.
Your website is an investment that should make you money.
A great website will appeal to your ideal customers, get found on search engines and help you make sales. These are all things you need, right?
Here’s the thing. It’s not that easy to create a great website, and hiring the right people to help you is one of the first and most important challenges you’ll face.
As a website copywriter, I’ve seen the web development process run like a dream, but I’ve also witnessed a lot of frustration, confusion and wasted budget in the process.
I’ve watched companies blow their marketing budget on a website built by a big-name agency only to find that it doesn’t actually drive traffic or sales.
I’ve heard from web developers who have watched projects stall because their clients haven’t been able to deliver the required content.
I’ve had companies come to me needing to rewrite their website copy because they didn’t have a content strategy in place from the beginning.
Wouldn’t it all be much simpler if entrepreneurs knew what goes into building a website before they got started?
In this blog, my aim is to help you lay the foundation for a successful web development project by teaching you what goes into the process and how you can get the best results. You’ll learn:
The five essential elements of a web development project
Who does what in a website build
The ideal sequence for the steps in the process
What it costs to build a website
How to hire the right people to help you build a website
What Goes Into Building a Website
As a first-time web design client, you may be surprised by just how much happens in the process and how much depends on you.
At a minimum, any website project should aim to achieve these goals:
Communicate clearly: anyone should be able to quickly understand who you are, what you offer and how to make a purchase, book a service, sign up or get in touch
Be searchable: your website should be optimized to rank on search engines so that it’s easy for your target audience to find you on sites like Google
Seamless functionality: The website should offer a user-friendly interface, intuitive navigation, clear calls to action and accessibility for all users
Brand consistency: the design and content, including visuals and written copy, should be compelling, consistent and aligned with your brand identity
Technical performance: your website should be built to ensure fast loading times, data security, mobile responsiveness and cross-browser compatibility
You may also have other goals for your specific website. For example, you may want to use your website to sell products, generate leads, book appointments or provide some kind of value to your audience.
With these goals in mind, let’s look at what needs to happen to turn your ideas into a living, breathing, money-making website.
The Five Essential Elements of a Website
Every website project should take five elements or roles into consideration.
Web Design: the layout, user experience, style and visual look and feel of the website. This can be ‘wireframed’ or mocked up using a tool like Figma, Balsamiq or Adobe XD, or it can be delivered as part of the web development process
Web Development: the coding and build out of the front end and back end of the actual website on a platform like WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify or Webflow
Web Copy: the messaging, content strategy and written words on the website
Visual Content: photography, graphics and branded elements including your logo, fonts and colour palette
SEO: search engine optimization, including ‘technical SEO’ which optimizes the back-end functionality of your site as well as ‘on-page SEO’, which optimizes the content and structure of individual pages for search terms)
From here we can break down the elements of a website into individual steps or jobs to be done. The following is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good starting point to help you understand what should be taken into account.
Website Development Jobs to Be Done
Scope out the project timeline, deliverables and costs
Choose and purchase a domain name
Research your audience, your business and your competitors
Define your customer persona and your brand messages
Conduct SEO keyword research
Map out the user journey and develop a sitemap
Write the website copy
Choose a website platform or CMS (content management system) such as WordPress, Squarespace or Shopify
Implement a site style guide including logos, fonts and colours
Gather or create visual assets including graphics and photography
Design the layout, look and feel of the website
Develop the website to meet all functionality requirements
Add e-commerce functionality if applicable
Upload all content including images and copy
Implement SEO best practices, including appropriate title tags, meta descriptions, headers, alt tags, image formatting and URLs
Test for cross-browser compatibility on web, mobile and tablet
Test the User Experience (UX) and optimize for usability, accessibility and conversion
Test the site speed to ensure fast loading times
Ensure security and compliance measures are met
Set up hosting and configure the domain settings
Set up analytics and tracking tools
Launch your live website
Verify your website with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
Maintain, update and optimize your website
Promote your website and market your business (but that’s a story for another blog post)
Depending on the scope of your website, there may be much more than this involved in the process, but consider this list the essentials. Even if you don’t entirely understand what exactly goes into each of these tasks yet, you can use this list to help you figure out what kind of professional help you need.
Who does what in a website build?
There’s no shortage of website copywriters (like me, hi!), developers, designers, SEO specialists, photographers and graphic designers out there, but this only begs more questions.
How do you find the right people?
Do you really need to hire professionals, or could you DIY some or all of it?
How much is all this going to cost, anyway?
Learn enough to know what success looks like so that you can vet your options and hold your team to account.
Here’s a tip: if you’re promised a website with little to no work required on your end, consider it a red flag.
You know your business better than anyone else. If you want your brand and your business to be represented in their best light, expect to be involved in the process to provide information, brand assets and feedback along the way.
With that said, the people you hire should lead the way and make it easy for you to understand where your input is required, what exactly is and is not included in their scope, how long the process should take and how/when you can share feedback or other input.
So, who is responsible for each of the five essential elements I’ve laid out above? Chances are you’re looking at one of four options:
You could hire an agency to handle it all. This tends to be the most expensive option, but it may save you time and simplify the process by keeping everything under one roof. The key is to understand where your agency’s strengths and weaknesses lie so that you can ensure your website objectives are met. For example, one agency may excel at design while lacking SEO capabilities.
You could hire a web designer/developer to design and build your website using written and visual content that you provide. This can be a relatively affordable option, especially if you opt for a templated website rather than a custom build. Keep in mind that you will be responsible for providing written and visual content, so ask yourself whether you or your team have the necessary skills to execute these critical tasks well.
You could hire different agencies or contractors to handle each element. This may seem like a more time-consuming process, but by hiring specialists, you can ensure that you’re working with experts in each field–and ideally getting the best value for your money.
You could do some or all of it yourself. If you have more time than money, it is entirely possible to build a basic website for yourself using a drag-and-drop web development platform like Squarespace. If this is the route you choose, consider hiring an expert to audit your site and ensure you’ve ticked all the boxes.
Whichever option you choose, take the time to review your budget, define your goals and carefully vet the people you hire to ensure that your expectations are in line. Once you make those hires, you should feel confident in trusting the pros to guide you, but listen to your instincts if something doesn’t feel right.
What Comes First, Website Design or Website Copy?
By now you’ve probably gotten the sense that there are many ways to crack an egg in the world of web development.
While many elements of a website project can be done in tandem, in my experience, clients get the best results and the process runs most efficiently when copy comes before design.
In an ideal world, I recommend the following step-by-step process:
Content Strategy (including research, messaging strategy and visual direction)
SEO Strategy (including keyword research)
Copywriting
Web Design
Visual Content and Copy Revisions
Web Development
Sometimes there are constraints which call for an adaptable approach. For example, you may be working with an existing website that needs a content refresh, or you may be working with a less flexible website template that requires a certain amount of written and visual content. By tackling design and copywriting collaboratively (or even switching the order), you can still achieve great results.
How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website?
Are you familiar with the concept of “good, fast, or cheap”?
The idea is that generally, you can have two but not all three of these factors at once, so you need to decide what’s most important to you and pick two.
When it comes to web development, this is only partly true in my experience. Yes, it’s rare to have all three but I believe that it’s possible to get a quality website (one that functions well, represents your brand and drives revenue), for a fair price (depending on your needs this can be possible under 5 figures) on a reasonable timeline (months not weeks or years).
I’ve seen beautiful websites built in a matter of months for a reasonable budget, and I’ve seen expensive websites built over excessive timeframes with poor results.
The takeaway here is not that you should strive to get a great website built quickly on the cheap. It’s that paying more money for a big-name agency to create your website will not necessarily guarantee the kind of results you’re after.
If you Google what it costs to build a website you’ll get a huge range, from a few hundred dollars to more than $100,000. All of these are realistic possibilities that I've seen in the real world:
A simple 1-3 page website could cost $2000-$4000
A fully-functional SEO-optimized 5-page website could cost $5000-$9000
A customized 10-page website could cost $10,000-$20,000
A complex, fully custom website could cost $50,000+
As an entrepreneur, you have to make countless decisions about where to invest your money, and your website is one of the most important marketing investments you’ll make. There will always be constraints, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for a website that doesn’t represent your brand, tell a powerful story and get results.
It means that you have a hands-on role to play in steering the ship (or building the thing), and you’ll have to get up to speed quickly if you’ve never driven this kind of boat before.
How To Choose The Right People To Build Your Website
Would it be nice if you had a bottomless budget to invest in marketing your business? Sure, but even then you’d be faced with the same challenges that I imagine you’re working through now: figuring out what exactly you need and finding the right people to do it.
When hiring to help you build a website, look for professionals who can tick all or most of these boxes:
A clearly defined scope including all of the key elements that will and will not be included
Pricing that fits with your budget
A portfolio of work that aligns with your brand, your audience and your style preferences
A process that connects the deliverables to your unique brand and business goals
Customer reviews that demonstrate their capabilities, results and professionalism
A confident recommendation from someone you trust or a business you respect
Personality, communication and professionalism that align with your working style
Last but not least, trust your gut. You may not be an expert in web development, SEO, design or copywriting, but the little voice inside your head has an important role to play. Now that you have a basic understanding of what goes into building a website, you can start exploring your options and making informed decisions to steer the project all the way to launch.
Are you looking for a recommended service provider to support you on any of the essential roles we’ve covered in this blog? Just ask! I’m eager to share my trusted network of professionals, so don’t hesitate to contact me.
