My Stress-Free Website Design Process that sets Small Businesses Up for Success
By: Brittney Gaddis
Tags: Website Design, Wordpress Website, Website Designer, Web Development, Web Design

My Stress-Free Website Design Process that sets Small Businesses Up for Success Brittney Gaddis Jan 22·5 min read

Throughout my career as a graphic and web designer, I’ve learned that a clear process is crucial to a successful outcome of a project. I’m conditioned to think creatively to find the best solution to a problem. For my clients, however, I’ve made the process of branding and website design easy. Whether you’re local to Owensboro, Kentucky like me, or we work together remotely to create your website, this process is always the same. This tried and through process works on both brand new and existing websites in need of an update!

Here’s a look into what you can expect from my Web Design Process when you decide to work with me.

Step 1: Surveys

SEO Survey

This survey collects information about your Business Name, Phone Number, Address(es), Service Areas, Services, Target Audience, and Competitors. This information will be used to do all of the On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO work that is included in my website packages. With this information, we ensure that your new website will be set up to appear in search.

Website Copywriting Survey

This survey will collect information about your business such as your Mission Statement, Brand Promise, or Tagline. We want to know what your core values are and what sets you apart. This is where we want you to think deeply about what matters to your target customer, and to give us all the juicy details about the history of your business. Really make sure you communicate your goals here. This information is crucial to communicate with visitors to your website! What we say here converts them into paying customers!

Website Design Survey

The website design survey collects details that allow us to create a website for you and get it online!

Hosting and Lead Details: In this short section, we ask details about your hosting information. I recommend Bluehost if you’d like to host and maintain your own website. If you’d like to forget the hassle of maintaining your own website, ask me about my website hosting packages.

In this short section, we ask details about your hosting information. I recommend Bluehost if you’d like to host and maintain your own website. If you’d like to forget the hassle of maintaining your own website, ask me about my website hosting packages. Audience, Goals, and Inspiration: The second portion of this survey goes into detail about your goals, your visual brand (such as your logo, brand colors, and photography), plans for website maintenance, and preferred lead funnel. We also ask you to provide us some examples of websites that you are drawn to visually so we get a glimpse into how you may want your website to look visually!

Step 2. File Collection

I provide all of my clients with a Shared Dropbox folder as part of the website design package. This is where you’ll upload all of your logo and photography files for your website. Please upload the most high resolution images available and do include your vector logo files. If you need help with creating an eye-catching logo, please do let me know before we begin on your website. Your logo is the backbone of your whole aesthetic, so it’s important to have your logo nailed down before your website!

*** Please be sure to save your files to your own hard drive or cloud storage platform as well. This folder is for our websites assets and isn’t meant to store your unrelated files.

3. SEO and Copywriting work begins

Once your surveys are completed and your assets are delivered, my team will begin working on SEO research. SEO research consists of finding the best keywords for your website to rank for so that you show up on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. SEO is an ongoing process, so it’s something that is important to continuously improve on regularly to improve your ranking, but this process is the foundation of your website’s SEO strategy.

After we receive keywords from our SEO Strategist, a copywriter will begin working on the Home Page copy for your website. They use information from your survey to put together an overview of your business on the home page. This is where visitors will find the most important information about your business such as your services, some photos, and a quick call to action (we do want conversions, after all!).

After a two-round revision process between you and our copywriter (if needed) to achieve the winning home page copy, we will follow the same process with the rest of your website pages. This process is EXACTLY the same for the rest of the pages as the home page, but we treat the rest of the pages as a group when collecting your feedback.

Step 4. WordPress Website Design

Finally, the fun part (but as a website designer, I may be biased)!

To begin, I’ll install a staging site to my domain. This is where the site will live until it’s ready to launch. It will be visible to you, but no traffic will come to your new site before it’s ready. This is great because if you do have a website currently it won’t be affected at all while we work. The SEO strategist and I work simultaneously on the staging site to complete our tasks during this time.

Similar to the way that we work on the copywriting, I’ll create an initial Home Page mockup with the approved website copy. It will showcase your photography, logo, and a menu linking to the rest of the pages, and I keep in mind your inspiration sites and competitor sites as I work. With these things in mind, I can create a really elevated site that you’ll be attracted to and your customers will choose over the competition. Once the home page is completed, I ask for feedback from you to make any changes needed. My website design packages include 2 free rounds of revisions.

After the website home page is approved, we follow the same process on the rest of the pages until finally, the whole website is ready to go live! At this point, I will move your website either to your hosting domain or move it to your hosting and maintenance plan with me, where it will be LIVE on your domain!

Step 5. Maintaining your Site

Like a home or a vehicle, your website is an investment that needs regular maintenance. With all website packages I include a 30 minute Zoom meeting to show you the back end of your WordPress website. Some people choose to make updates to their site themselves, while others prefer to leave it in the hands of my team to host and maintain. Once your website is live and you or your team has logged in, our team will is not responsible for making any further changes, corrections, or updates.

Our Website Maintenance and Hosting package includes:

Managed WordPress Hosting

Any Premium plugin and license fees needed

SSL certificate

Regular Malware Scans and uptime monitoring

Weekly WordPress updates

Weekly Theme updates

Website Security

Changes such as page additions, text changes, and photo updates are not included in this package, but we’re happy to facilitate those as well for an additional fee.

If you aren’t comfortable with website work, I do recommend allowing us to maintain it to keep your website safe and secure. Allowing us to maintain your website gives you peace of mind and gives you time back to do what you do best, running your small business!

Contact me today to begin the process of redesigning or building your new website!