Websites that bring you customers

Every good website starts with a conversation, long before anyone opens a design tool. The team writes down what the site has to achieve, how success will be measured and who makes the final decisions, and that scope is approved before work moves on⁷. Then every page is mapped with its purpose, its owner and its web address. For a small business this planning usually takes 1 to 2 weeks⁶, while the UK government's own guidance says discovery for a public service typically runs 4 to 8 weeks⁸.

Design follows and usually takes 2 to 4 weeks⁶. The useful version of this step designs a small set of page layouts with the real words, prices and photos already in them, and checks how each one behaves on a phone⁷. That matters because Google indexes and ranks a site by its mobile version⁹. A design that only looks right on a large screen is still judged by the small one.

Building is the longest stretch, often 3 to 8 weeks⁶. Forms, bookings, tracking, accessibility and speed are set up on a private staging copy where the owner can already edit pages⁷. Then the site is tested against the real jobs it has to do, like a guest booking a room late at night on a phone, and every problem goes on a list with an owner and a level of urgency⁷. Testing usually takes another 1 to 2 weeks⁶.

If there is an old website, each old address is mapped to its new one and redirected, so Google and old links still land on the right page¹⁰. Google warns that rankings can move about for a while after a site moves, and for a medium sized site it can take a few weeks or more to settle¹⁰. On launch day each task has a named owner, there is a plan to roll back if something breaks, and the first 24 to 72 hours are watched closely⁷.