Why the process matters more than the stack
Nearly every website disaster — late, over budget, quietly abandoned — is a process failure wearing a technical costume. The phases below are how competent projects actually run, what each one produces, and what is expected from you in it. If a developer cannot describe their version of this, that is the finding.
Phase 1 — Discovery (1–2 weeks)
Goal: a written spec both sides sign. Business goal, pages and features, integrations, content responsibility, constraints, budget band, timeline. You provide: honest answers, access to what exists, decisions within 48 hours. Output: a fixed scope and price. Skipping discovery to "start faster" is how projects pay three weeks to save one.
Phase 2 — Design (1–3 weeks)
Wireframes first for structure, visual design second for the look — in that order, because arguing about button colors is cheap and arguing about page structure after design is expensive. You provide: consolidated feedback per round (one voice, not a committee relay), brand assets, content deadlines. Output: approved designs for every unique template — usually 3–5, not one per page.
Phase 3 — Build (2–8 weeks)
Templates become code, the CMS is structured, integrations are wired. You should see progress on a staging site weekly — not a reveal at the end. You provide: prompt reviews of what lands on staging. Output: a working site on staging, password-protected, fully clickable.
Phase 4 — Content (runs parallel, always late)
The phase that kills timelines. Copy, images, product data, approvals — it is real work that someone must own, decided at discovery. The projects that launch on time are the ones that scheduled content like engineering, with owners and dates. Output: every page populated with real material, no lorem ipsum surviving to launch.
Phase 5 — QA and rehearsal (1–2 weeks)
Every form submitted, every link clicked, every browser and phone checked, redirects mapped and tested, analytics verified with real visits. The launch checklist is the minimum bar. Output: a signed-off checklist — in public, so "done" means written down.
Phase 6 — Launch (a day, prepared for weeks)
Anticlimax is the goal: DNS flips, SSL issues, sitemap submits, the top revenue paths get clicked through once more, everyone watches the logs for an hour. The drama-free launch is not luck; it is phase 5 having already happened.
Phase 7 — Aftercare (the part nobody budgets)
A warranty window for defects, a written maintenance posture — updates, backups, restore drills, monitoring — and a handover pack: credentials, documentation, a runbook. Sites are subscriptions with occasional capital expenses; the ones that stay healthy are the ones whose owners knew that on day one. Projects here run on exactly this process — the quote you receive maps to these phases with dates.