Website design & development process

Having a new website built can feel like a big undertaking, especially if you’ve never done it before.

You may know your current website isn’t working, or that your business has outgrown it, without knowing what the replacement should look like. You might have pages of ideas ready to go, or only a vague picture in your head.

Either is completely fine.

You don’t need to understand WordPress, website structure, responsive design, or technical SEO before contacting AuthoritySites. That’s my job.

What you do need is a willingness to talk honestly about your business, your customers, and what you want the website to achieve. From there, I’ll guide you through a clear process that turns those ideas into something practical.

A Quick Word About Cheap Websites

Yes, you can get a website for £500. You can also spend several thousand pounds and still end up with a bad one — price alone doesn’t guarantee quality. The real difference is the amount of thought, experience and care that goes into the work.

A cheap website often involves installing a ready-made template, swapping out the demo content and changing a few colours. That may be enough if you only need a very basic online presence. But if your website needs to attract customers, explain your services, support your SEO and represent your business properly, there’s more involved.

You aren’t simply paying for someone to put words and pictures on a screen. You’re paying for research, planning, content structure, design, development, mobile responsiveness, performance, search foundations, and all the small decisions that make the finished website easier to use.

I’ve been building websites and working with SEO since 2013. That experience helps me spot problems, ask better questions, and avoid decisions that could cost you more to fix later. I’m not here to be an order-taker. If I think an idea will confuse visitors, slow down the website or work against your goals, I’ll tell you.

Not because I want to take over your project, but because honest advice is part of what you’re paying me for.

Step 1: Research

Before we touch the design, I need to understand what we’re building and why.

We’ll talk about your business, your services, your customers, and the goals you have for the new website. We’ll look at what makes your business different and what someone needs to know before they feel ready to contact you, make a booking, or buy from you.

If you already have a website, we’ll review what is and isn’t working. There may be useful content worth keeping, pages that need improving, and issues we shouldn’t carry over to the new site.

We may also look at competitors and other websites in your industry. This isn’t about copying them; it’s about understanding what your audience expects to see, identifying gaps, and finding opportunities to communicate your value more clearly.

This stage helps us answer some important questions:

Who is the website for? What are those people looking for? What questions are they likely to have? What might make them hesitate? What do we want them to do next?

The clearer we are on those points, the easier it is to build a website that does its job.

You know your business better than I ever will. I understand websites, content, usability, and SEO. The best results come from combining that knowledge.

Step 2: Content

Content has a habit of being treated as the thing we’ll “sort out later.”

Then later arrives, the website is ready to be designed, and nobody knows what any of the pages are supposed to say.

I prefer to avoid that.

The words and images on your website influence almost every design decision. They determine which pages you need, how those pages should be structured, and what visitors need to see first.

That’s why content needs to be discussed early.

We’ll gather everything the website requires, including your service details, written copy, photographs, testimonials, frequently asked questions, contact information, and any existing brand materials.

Some clients arrive with everything neatly organised in folders. Others have half a logo, a collection of old photographs, and several ideas stored in the Notes app on their phone.

Both are workable starting points.

If you already have written content, I’ll review it and help organise it for the new website. We may be able to reuse parts of it, improve weaker sections, and remove anything that’s no longer relevant.

If you don’t know what to write, I can help you plan the pages or write the website copy as part of the project.

I don’t design complete websites around meaningless placeholder text. A layout created for two short paragraphs can quickly fall apart when the real content turns out to be twelve paragraphs, a list of services, and three testimonials.

The content doesn’t need to be polished down to the final comma before we begin. But we do need to know what each page is trying to communicate.

Step 3: Planning

Once we understand the business, the audience, and the content, I can plan the structure of the website.

This usually begins with a sitemap that shows which pages are needed and how they fit together.

We’ll look at the main navigation, the relationships between different services, and the journey someone might take from arriving on the website to making an enquiry.

The structure should make sense to the people using the site, not just the people who built it.

Visitors shouldn’t have to dig through endless menus, decode clever page names, or click five times to find a telephone number. They should be able to understand what you do, find the information they need, and know what their next step is.

SEO is considered during this stage too.

A clear site structure helps search engines understand your business, services, topics, and locations. Planning this properly from the beginning gives us much stronger foundations than trying to force SEO into the website once everything else is finished.

We’ll also decide what functionality the website genuinely needs. This may include contact forms, appointment booking, payments, email sign-up forms, a blog, or connections with other systems you already use.

This is also where I may question some of your ideas.

That isn’t me being difficult — it’s because features should be included for a reason.

A huge slider, elaborate animation, or a collection of plugins may look impressive in a demonstration, but it can also slow the website down, distract visitors, and create more things to maintain.

Just because something can be added doesn’t mean it will help your website do its job.

Step 4: Design and Development

Once the structure and content direction are agreed, I can begin designing and building your website.

The design will be shaped around your business, rather than forcing your content into a layout created for somebody else.

We’ll consider your colours, typography, imagery and existing brand identity, but good website design is about more than looking attractive — it should make the content easier to understand.

Headings should guide people through the page. Important information should be easy to spot. Text should be comfortable to read. Buttons should look like buttons, and visitors should always know what to do next.

Your target audience remains part of every decision. A website selling professional services needs to build trust differently from one selling products or encouraging people to book an appointment.

I don’t leave the mobile version until the end. Your website will be built to work across phones, tablets, laptops and larger desktop screens from the start.

I build primarily with WordPress because it gives you flexibility and ownership. You’ll be able to manage normal content yourself without needing to understand code, or AuthoritySites can continue looking after everything for you.

I use reliable, professionally maintained WordPress tools and customise them around the project. I don’t take a free theme, change the logo and call it a custom website.

Custom design also doesn’t mean rebuilding every basic feature from scratch just to make the project sound more complicated. It means choosing the right foundation and shaping it around the needs of your business.

During development, I’ll also consider:

Mobile responsiveness
Page-loading performance
Clear heading structures
Search-friendly page addresses
Image optimisation
Technical SEO foundations
Accessibility and usability
Security
Reliable plugins
Simple ongoing management

Step 5: Testing

Before your website goes live, it needs to be tested properly.

I’ll check the pages across different screen sizes and modern browsers to make sure the design, content and navigation behave as expected.

Forms will be submitted. Buttons will be clicked. Links will be checked. Images, headings, page titles and contact details will be reviewed.

I’ll also look for the smaller problems that are easy to miss after weeks of looking at the same pages: inconsistent spacing, awkward mobile layouts, missing links, or a call to action that leads nowhere.

If the new website is replacing an existing one, I’ll review the old page addresses and set up appropriate redirects where required.

This matters because existing pages may already receive visitors or hold search value. Redirecting them to the most relevant new pages helps protect that value and prevents people from landing on unnecessary error pages.

No responsible website designer can promise that rankings will never change after a rebuild. Search engines don’t work that way. What I can do is plan the migration carefully and avoid the preventable mistakes that cause many redesigns to lose traffic.

You’ll also have the opportunity to review the website and provide feedback before it’s launched.

Step 6: Website Launch

Once everything has been approved, the website can go live.

Depending on the project, this may involve connecting your domain, configuring hosting, installing an SSL certificate, and completing another set of checks on the live site.

Where appropriate, I can also connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console so you can start collecting useful information about how people find and use the site.

After launch, I’ll show you how to manage the everyday parts of your WordPress website. You won’t be handed a login and left to figure everything out on your own.

And if you’d rather never go near the WordPress dashboard, that’s fine too.