The web design process is often explained as a perfectly straight line: discovery, design, development and launch.
Those are the major stages of my process too. In practice, though, building a website is much more iterative.
A design decision can change once I see it working in the browser. Development can expose something that sends me back to design. Content can change how a page should be organized. Testing can reveal a scenario nobody considered earlier.
The process gives the project structure, but it should not prevent the project from changing when something better becomes obvious.
A good web design process gives the client and designer a shared understanding of what is being built, why it is being built and what the final outcome is supposed to accomplish.
What happens when you first contact a web designer?
When someone contacts me about a website, I usually start with an email conversation.
Before getting too far into the project, I want to understand what already exists and what the business actually needs.
Some of the early questions can include:
- What is the budget?
- Is there already a website?
- Is there existing branding?
- Are fonts and colours already established?
- Are copy and photography available?
- What functionality does the website need?
- What kind of timeline are we working with?
If the project looks like a good fit, particularly for a larger project, the next step can be a discovery call.
If you are still at the budgeting stage before that conversation, How Much Does a Small Business Website Cost in Canada? breaks down some of the factors that affect project pricing.
What happens during website discovery?
Discovery is where I am trying to understand the direction of the entire project.
What should the website do? What should the brand communicate? Who is going to use it? What does that audience care about? What information do they need? What pages might be necessary? What functionality needs to be implemented?
I also like seeing examples of websites or styles the client is drawn to.
Those examples are not there so I can copy another website. They help identify the visual language someone has in mind.
Maybe they consistently choose bold typography. Maybe they like editorial layouts, muted colours, very minimal interfaces or image-heavy websites.
That gives me something to interpret rather than asking a client to describe an entire visual system in design terminology.
Who decides how many pages the website needs?
One of my favourite ways to work is for a client to give me the information and let me figure out how it should be organized.
I have seen people get stuck trying to decide exactly what should go on every page before they even know what pages the website needs.
Usually, I can determine the structure from the content, the business and what customers need to find.
There are common patterns. A business might need a homepage, About page, services, products and contact information. But those are starting points rather than a mandatory website formula.
You do not need to arrive knowing that you need exactly five pages. Give me the information first. We can figure out where it belongs.
I go much deeper into that decision in What Pages Should a Small Business Website Have?, including how I decide when information actually deserves its own page.
What if you already have a website?
If there is an existing website, I want to review it before deciding what the new one should become.
I look at the navigation, existing content, imagery, page structure and what is currently happening across the website.
That helps answer an important question: what actually needs to change?
A redesign does not mean everything that already exists needs to be thrown away. Some content or structure may still work perfectly well.
Sometimes that review reveals that the website does not need a full rebuild at all. Website Refresh vs. Redesign looks more closely at how to tell the difference between surface problems and structural ones.
What should you give your web designer before design starts?
The more I understand about the business, the easier it is to create something that actually represents it.
Depending on the project, useful materials can include:
- Logo files
- Existing brand colours and fonts
- Website copy
- Photography and other imagery
- Services and products
- Team information where applicable
- Hours and location information
- Social media accounts
- Examples of visual styles you like
Not every project starts with all of those things ready.
If a business does not have an established colour palette, fonts or visual direction, I can develop those as part of the project. Sometimes that means exploring several directions before deciding what fits.
How does the actual website design start?
Before designing page after page, I need some kind of visual system.
That can include typography, colours, spacing, font sizes, border radius, buttons, cards, interaction states and other repeated interface decisions.
Even small constraints can influence the entire direction.
I have had to design around logos that only existed inside a specific rectangular background, for example. Suddenly that background colour and shape become something the rest of the website has to work with.
Those constraints are part of design too.
A design system is not separate from the website. It is the set of decisions that stops every page from feeling like it was designed on a different Tuesday.
Which page gets designed first?
Once I have the beginnings of the style system, I usually like to start with the homepage, and particularly the hero.
The homepage tends to establish a lot of the visual personality of the website.
From there, it becomes easier to see how the system can expand across the rest of the pages.
Interestingly, navigation is something I often deal with later. Navigation can feel intimidating to some people, but organizing it is one of the parts of web design that comes fairly naturally to me.
The navigation still has to support the structure established earlier, though. I explain why that matters in Why Website Navigation Matters More Than You Think.
Do you design the entire website before development?
Not always.
This depends heavily on the project and how the client prefers to work.
If a client wants to review formal design files and approve the direction before anything is developed, I will design in Figma first.
In that situation, I prefer showing an important page first rather than designing the entire website before finding out whether the client likes the direction.
Designing one page gives us a chance to establish the language of the website before repeating it everywhere.
On projects where I have more freedom, I actually enjoy designing and developing together.
That works best when the underlying styles and reusable components are organized properly from the beginning.
If you are curious about where those two jobs differ and where they start overlapping, Web Designer vs. Web Developer breaks that down separately.
Why doesn't the developed website look exactly like Figma?
Usually it is close, but I do not treat the Figma file as untouchable.
A browser is a different environment.
Once I see the real website, I might realize a particular space feels too large, a section needs more breathing room, a component does not feel quite right or something simply looked better in the static design than it does when the page is actually being used.
So I change it.
The design file is part of the process. The website is the thing people actually have to use.
How does client feedback work?
Once there is something to review, I send the client the relevant documentation or design and collect their feedback.
I generally prefer feedback to be collected together rather than receiving one tiny change at a time.
That makes it much easier to understand the feedback as a whole and make changes efficiently.
That said, people communicate differently. Some clients work much better dealing with one thing at a time, and the process can adapt to that.
My website projects typically include defined revision rounds so there is room to refine the design without allowing the project to continue indefinitely.
What if you change your mind halfway through?
Small changes are expected.
Deciding halfway through the project that the entire website should have a completely different visual direction is another situation.
At that point, many interconnected decisions may already have been made. Components have been designed, pages may have been built and the established system has been applied throughout the project.
A major change in direction can therefore mean changes to the timeline, scope and price.
That is one reason establishing the direction early is so important.
What actually happens during website development?
Once development is underway, I am turning the design and content into the actual website.
Depending on the project, I might be working with technologies such as Next.js, React or Gatsby, along with CSS or styled-components for the interface.
I build reusable components wherever they make sense rather than treating every page as an entirely separate piece of code.
A button is a simple example. If the same button style appears throughout the website, it should behave like part of a system, not like twenty unrelated buttons that happen to look similar.
The same thinking applies to cards, sections, forms, navigation, layouts and other repeating interface patterns.
If the project needs a database, integrations or other functionality, that work becomes part of the development stage too.
When those requirements grow into user accounts, dashboards, database-driven features or more complex application logic, the project can move beyond a standard business website and toward custom web application development.
When does responsive design happen?
During both design and development.
Personally, I find it easier to begin with more space and then determine what needs to change as the screen gets smaller.
That is simply the workflow that makes the most sense to me. Mobile-first is a common approach, but there is more than one way to arrive at a strong responsive interface.
When I reduce the available space, I can ask practical questions. Does this still need to be visible? Should this information collapse? Should the layout stack? Does the navigation need to change?
Responsive design is not just making everything physically smaller.
The screen gets smaller. The job of the page does not.
Where does accessibility fit into web design?
Accessibility should be considered throughout design and development rather than added at the very end.
Colour contrast is an obvious example. A form can technically exist and still be difficult to use if the labels, inputs or messages are difficult to read.
Accessibility considerations can also affect semantic structure, keyboard interaction, forms, alternative text, focus states and how interface elements are implemented.
These decisions are easier to handle when they are part of the system rather than something you try to repair after every page has already been built.
If an existing website needs a more focused review, I also offer an Accessibility Review as a separate service.
When does SEO happen during a website build?
SEO is another area I prefer to think about during the build rather than only after launch.
Depending on the scope of the project, the work I incorporate can include page titles and descriptions, heading structure, image optimization, internal linking, structured data, robots directives, XML sitemaps and setting the site up in Google Search Console.
Keywords and search intent can also influence how pages are structured and what they need to communicate.
Not every web designer includes the same SEO work in a website project, and a properly built website is not the same thing as an ongoing SEO campaign.
But if search matters to the project, it makes much more sense to consider the technical and on-page foundation while the website is being built.
For businesses that want search visibility worked on beyond that foundation, my SEO services cover that as a separate area of work.
What happens before a website launches?
Testing. A lot of testing.
I want to see what happens across different screen sizes, browsers, devices, inputs and scenarios.
Forms need to submit properly. Links need to work. Responsive layouts need to behave. Content needs to appear where it is supposed to. Interactive elements need to respond properly.
The more functionality a website has, the more scenarios there are to test.
Testing is also where some bugs finally introduce themselves. They are very polite that way.
What happens on website launch day?
Launch is the point where the website moves into its live environment, but that does not mean I press one button and disappear.
I launch the site, deal with any issues that appear, and continue testing it across devices and platforms in its live environment.
If the client needs to manage content themselves, training or instructions can also be provided depending on the project.
I also like having a short post-launch support period, around two weeks, because real-world use can uncover small bugs or scenarios that were not obvious before launch.
Ongoing website maintenance can continue separately after that if the business needs it.
If you want ongoing support after that initial launch period, you can also compare my website maintenance and management plans.
How involved should the client be?
I want the client involved enough that they understand what is happening and feel represented by the result.
They know their business. Their knowledge about their customers, services, products and goals is incredibly important.
But there also needs to be room for me to do the job they hired me to do.
Micromanaging every spacing decision or individual design choice does not necessarily create a better website.
In fact, one of my favourite briefs is essentially: “Here is the business. Here is what we need. Make it look good.”
That gives me the problem, the information and the goal, with room to determine the solution.
The client should not have to design the website for the web designer.
Is the web design process always the same?
No.
Discovery, design, development and launch are useful stages, but the amount of time and attention each one needs changes with the project.
They can also overlap.
I can move into development and discover something that makes me return to design. I can look at something the next day and decide I do not like it anymore. A responsive layout can reveal that a component needs to change everywhere.
That does not mean the process has failed. It means the process is responding to the actual product being built.
So what does a good web design process look like?
To me, a good web design process is one where the client and designer can communicate clearly, both understand where the project is going and both have a strong understanding of the outcome they are working toward.
The stages provide structure, but the structure should support the work rather than control it.
Some projects need more discovery. Some need more design exploration. Some become development-heavy. Others move incredibly quickly because the content, direction and requirements are clear from the beginning.
A good web design process is not about following the same steps in exactly the same way every time. It is about keeping everyone on the same page while turning the right information into the right website.