Starting a new website project can be a huge undertaking. Especially when you are not familiar with the process. In this blog post, we highlight the key steps of our process and share a few helpful tips that will ensure a project runs smoothly.

Discovery Meeting

At Yelling Mule, every website project starts with a discovery meeting. It is during this meeting where the client meets our whole team for the first time. The purpose of this meeting is to get to know the client better and uncover the key goals they want their new website to accomplish. To help get the most out of this meeting we recommend clients establish:

• Website examples (content and functionality) 
• Have only one or two main points of contact
• Start collecting your website content 
• Provide all necessary login information

Homepage Design 

During this phase, our design team takes all of the information the client provided in the discovery meeting and designs the homepage of the website. The homepage may go through a few different versions depending on the feedback from the client. It is important for the client to 100% approve the homepage because it sets the tone for the rest of the site. We also recommend for clients to start organizing content and approve their sitemap because it could potentially interfere with the timeline of other phases if too many edits need to be made.

Interiors Design 

Interiors is where the design team designs the rest of the pages that will make up the website itself. During this phase, we recommend for content to already be organized. In terms of copy, exact phrasing doesn’t have to be finalized but we do encourage clients to have an idea of how long certain sections will be. The length of the text can heavily influence the design of the website.

Front End Development 

In front-end development, our developer takes the approved designs from interiors and implements them into a static, responsive website. This is where the website starts to come to life and where you can see the animations, along with all of the approved templates. In this stage, the website should look exactly like the designs unless the client wants something changed. 

Back End Development 

Once front-end is completed, the static website is then implemented into WordPress. At Yelling Mule, we use ACF to make our website flexible and easy to use, like a word document We also offer flexible content which is like a page builder but constricted to what was approved in design. 

Populating 

Populating is a lot more hands-on for the client than front-end or back-end. Throughout the entire process, the client has been organizing and finalizing the content that will appear on the site. 

Website Launch 

The final part of this process is the website launch. This is when your website is made live and you can share it with the public! To help ensure this stage of the process is complete in a timely manner, clients should make sure that all of their login information is organized and available for the actual launch.