How Building a Website is Like Building a House

Voted #1 Best Branding Agency in Nashville, Brentwood & Franklin TN

Written by: Nice Branding Agency

Categories: Branding Tips

Published On: 4.29.2019

For those who don’t work in the website development Nashville industry, it can be difficult to understand exactly how a website is created. But having a grasp on how the process progresses does wonders in setting your mind at ease. This really allows you to trust the branding company you hired during the website design and development project. You see, it’s important that as we progress through your website development Nashville project, we have your express approval at every stage. We think its very similar to the process of building a house. You can’t change the footprint of your house after the foundation has been poured, or move walls after the framing has been done. Building a website has similar implications surrounding the process.

The Location

Before building a custom home, you’ve first got to identify where you will build. Similarly, when creating a custom website during website development Nashville, you’ve got to determine where you will host the site. Just like when you’re selecting a location on which to build your home, choosing a host is paramount and you will likely consider safety and cost, among other factors. A cheap plot of land in a terrible location that’s prone to flooding isn’t where you want to build. And this mentality should be applied to selecting a host for your website, as well. According to one developer, "many times, hosting is an afterthought and the decision gets made based on how cheaply it can be purchased. Cheap or shared hosting can leave you hanging when you get a lot of traffic or someone tries to hack the site.” "With a managed hosting company, you get enterprise-quality servers that are fast and scalable, and it means that you as the business owner get the benefit of having enterprise-level system administrators running the servers. You can expect to pay more for this sort of quality, but the alternative is paying a low monthly fee for a slow website that doesn't impress your customers."

Your Address

The address for your website is your domain. Your URL. Your www. Ideally, you’re looking to have an address that’s easy to locate and simple to remember.

The Blueprint

At Nice Branding Agency, the beginning of a website development Nashville project is the strategy. And for a website design and development project, this strategy comes in the form of wireframe development. The wireframe is like the blueprint for a house. It’s a skeleton that shows both us and you exactly where each element will live within the site. Just as a blueprint dictates where rooms will be located and how electrical and plumbing will reach those rooms, the wireframe shows us where key content will live and how the user will navigate between pages and sections via scrolls and clicks. It’s during this phase that we determine header and footer navigation, the user journey, calls to action, headlines and subheadings, where images and graphics will be displayed, and where copy will live. Basically, the wireframe is a guide to the bones of the website, just as the blueprint is a guide to the bones of a house.

The Design Phase

Once the blueprints are approved, it’s time to bring in the design. During the design phase, we will give life to those bones we laid out. Here, we will incorporate design elements that are in line with the structure developed during wireframing. Essentially, in keeping with the ‘home-building’ analogy, this is where we pick paint colors, fixtures, and hardware. For a website, this comes in the form of colors, graphics, icons, buttons, imagery, fonts, and copy. There should be no surprises at this point. We’ve presented you with the bones of the website, and you’ve signed off on the structure. The design phase is where we put your brand on display. Our website design team will implement a design that includes your brand colors, fonts, images from your photo library, and other design features. Now, let’s relate this to building a custom home. At this point, once you start selecting paint colors, it’s pretty much too late to knock out a wall or move the location of your kitchen. When we have the sign off on your wireframe, we want to keep the structure of the site intact.

Time to Build

As the designs are approved, it’s time to go to work building the website. Our website developer will work hand in hand with our website design team to breathe life into our comps. Your custom WordPress website will be built completely from scratch during website development Nashville. Throughout the website build, attention will be given to SEO best practices, which include, but are not limited to, the implementation of proper image naming and sizing with associated alt tags, as well as minimized use of CSS and JavaScript, aiding in ideal load times. The use of clean code, proper heading structure, and proper URL structure will aid in future SEO efforts. The speed of your site can impact everything from conversion rates to search engine rankings. We ensure the performance of your site is as important as the UX and the visual impact it has with your audience.

Inspections

At the completion of the construction phase, you’ll revisit your punch list and inspect the house to confirm that everything is in working order during website development Nashville. When you build a new custom WordPress website, we’ll engage in a similar inspection phase. We call this the testing phase. Here, we will click every link and button, complete every form, scroll through every page, and ensure that the site functions and appears as intended. We’ll also complete this type of testing from a mobile device to confirm mobile responsiveness.

Move-In Day

Your beautiful new house/website is ready for you! It’s time to move in. If you’ve built your website with us, you’re getting all new, custom-created content. The content we develop for your website will place priority on user experience and brand engagement. We will use copy, including headings, subheads, calls to action, and body copy to communicate key messaging in your brand voice, while consistently urging viewers to enroll in an intended action. Building a new house or a new website can be a huge undertaking. But as long as you’ve got the right builder, the process is exciting and super satisfying.

Website Development Nashville Projects

Web trends change rapidly. If you’re unsure whether it’s time for a new website, check out our article on what to expect when building a website and see how your site measures up. If you’re ready to break ground, give us a shout. We’ve got our (pink) hardhats ready.