Whether your Internet project is large or small, your web design project must follow some methodology which will help you to prioritise the steps to gathering requirements, designing and building a new client website.

Every website design goes through under following four phases

1. Preproduction
2. Production
3. Release
4. Maintenance
   

Preproduction
In the preproduction phase, website and application details are discussed & functionality is decided. It is important to understand the needs and reasons for requiring web design work. Important tasks like defining goals, targeting audience, prioritise, etc. One can also prepare a project brief to summarize the project, develop a generalized web strategy based on the client’s needs, consult with technicians and programmers to get rough estimates of the time involved, prepare an outline budget and schedule if applicable, decide on technical solutions to meet client needs and finally use the strategy to develop strategic objectives that will clearly meet the clients needs.

Production
Content gathering is very important in production phase. Content is like repository of website such as all images, documents, reports, audio and video files to be used in the site. This also includes information required from the client. After content is gathered, this is followed by the design & construction of website which includes creating template pages without graphics to show the client how the site layout will work, adding site color scheme to layouts, graphic design using all of the above gathered content, maps and layouts. Last but very important, comes Testing and handover which make sure everything is working as it was expected. There are several types of testing can be done for functional testing of technical solutions, load testing, security testing and user testing. Finally, the client signs off the site usability.

Release
Release means actual delivery of the product, which involves transferring the website to a live server, ensuring the client has a complete copy of the site on disk or CD and training users on site operation.

Maintenance
Maintenance includes ensuring the project manager is familiar with the client’s point of contact for updated content. It is important to ensure that the client is aware of the time frame, schedule and cost of updates. Updates must be completed in a timely fashion, or the client could use a content management system for their website, which would save time and money in the long run.