What Is The Website Project Lifecycle?

How long will my website take to go live? That’s the question we get asked the most here at Engage Web. The answer, as you can imagine, is very much “it depends” or “how long is a piece of string”? Except we can actually give you a more accurate idea by detailing the website project lifecycle we use.

It all starts when you phone, email or book a call with one of our team…

Here’s how the Project Lifecycle works

1.
Initial Enquiry

Initial Enquiry

You make an enquiry with Engage Web. You could email us, send a message through our website or call us on 0345 6214321. We’ll take some details from you, and book you in for a discovery meeting with one of our team.

2.
Discovery Meeting

Discovery Meeting

This could be online via video call, or in person at our office here in Ellesmere Port. We’ll go through your business growth plans, what you’d like to achieve and discuss the process with you.

3.
Proposal

Proposal

We’ll create a detailed proposal for you, with costings and timescales. This will include everything we’re going to do and how it’s going to work.

4.
Contract Signed

Contract Signed

You’re able to sign the contact digitally, make the initial payment and set up a direct debit to begin working with Engage Web.

5.
Call With Designer & Content Editor

Call With Designer & Content Editor

Your call with your website designer and your content editor is booked in. During this call, you will discuss the visuals of the website with your web designer: what you like and dislike, your competitors and specifics on what your website should do and how it should look. You’ll also speak with your content editor who will talk with you how to focus in on your target client/customer, why you do what you do, why your clients like working with, tone of voice etc.

6.
Design Concepts

Design Concepts

Your web designer will begin work on your website, and produce a design concept for you based on your requirements.

7.
Design QA

Design QA

The design will be reviewed by another of our design team to help ensure it meets your requirements - before the design is presented to you.

8.
Approval / Amends

Approval / Amends

You will receive the design to approve. If you have any amends for the design, this is your chance to have these changes actioned by our web designer before it is given back to you to approve once more. Once the design is approved by you, it moves on to the website build.

9.
Build Process

Build Process

The website is built by our team. This is a full website build, constructed behind a ‘holding page’ so it cannot be accessed by anyone without the login codes and can’t be seen by the search engines, yet.

10.
Build QA

Build QA

The website build is checked using our quality assurance checks by another of our web designers.

11.
Approval / Amends

Approval / Amends

The finished website is presented to you for approval. You are given access to the hidden version of the website so you can click around the site and check all of the pages. If there are amends from you at this stage, again this is an opportunity to do this, and these can be made by our team.

12.
Go Live

Go Live

Once you’re happy with the website, we schedule a go-live date where our team will put the website live.

Summary

That’s the whole process for creating a website for you. For our Fresh Start websites, we estimate the website takes around six to eight weeks from the contract signing to the go live date. This time can vary, of course, depending on how quickly you come back with amends and approve the design and the build.

The fastest we have ever put a website live was 10 days, but this is very much the exception rather than the rule!