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Planning

What a business website project includes

A walk through a website project in order, so you know what happens, what is asked of you, and which items need to be written into the agreement to be included.

Published 10 October 2026 · 3 min read

A website project looks like one job from the outside, but it is a sequence of smaller ones, and each has something only you can provide. Knowing the sequence makes quotes easier to compare and delays easier to avoid.

This describes how I run projects at Website Craft Room. Other developers order things differently, but the same questions come up in every project.

The stages

  1. Discovery. A short call about your goals, your customers, what you sell, and what your current site does or does not do. You: explain the business honestly, including what is not working.
  2. Content collection. The facts, documents and photographs for each page are gathered, and dates are agreed. You: supply the material, or say what you cannot supply.
  3. Design. One design direction, built around the enquiry you want a visitor to make. You: give feedback on the direction and approve it.
  4. Development. The pages and reusable templates are built to work on phone, tablet and desktop. You: review pages as they appear and answer questions quickly.
  5. SEO and tracking setup. Only in packages that include it: search planning, titles, descriptions, internal links, analytics and enquiry tracking. You: provide account access where it is needed.
  6. Quality checks. Screen sizes, links and enquiry routes are checked before launch. You: test the enquiry route yourself.
  7. Launch. The site goes live on your domain and hosting. You: provide the domain and hosting logins, or arrange them.
  8. Handover. You receive the finished site, and the post-launch bug-support period begins. You: report anything that does not work.

What counts as a page

“Seventy pages” can mean very different things. A useful definition counts a page only if it has its own useful content and its own address. Anchor sections inside a page do not count, nor do filtered or duplicate versions of the same address, empty placeholder pages, redirects, or pages that differ only by a swapped keyword. Google’s starter guide makes the same basic point from the search side: each piece of content should live at one address, and pages should have their own descriptive titles and descriptions.

Ask any developer how they count pages before you compare page numbers.

What is usually not included

Unless it is written into the proposal, assume these are separate:

  • Writing the content and taking photographs. Some developers offer it, many do not.
  • The domain name and hosting. These are paid to other companies and are normally in your name.
  • Advertising and paid tools.
  • A backend, booking system or online payments. A site that takes bookings or payments is a larger project than one that presents information; frontend, backend and what your site needs explains the difference.
  • Ongoing work after launch, such as updates, monitoring or search work beyond what the package states.

None of these is unreasonable to be separate. The risk is finding out at the end that you assumed otherwise.

What happens after launch

Launch is the point where visitors can reach the site, not the point where it starts to bring in enquiries. Many packages include a fixed period in which bugs are fixed for free. After that, changes are either quoted individually or covered by a maintenance arrangement. The guide to what a website maintenance plan should include explains how to read one.

What makes projects late

The note on how long a business website takes goes into the schedule in detail.

Three causes come up often: content arriving late, many people each asking for different changes, or logins for the domain and hosting nobody can find. A short list of who decides what, agreed at the start, removes most of the second problem. The first and third are covered in the note on what to prepare before a website project.

Sources

  • What to prepare before a website projectMissing material, rather than design or code, is a common reason a website is held up. Gather these items first and the project can move at the speed of the build.
  • What affects the cost of a business websiteThere is no single price for a website, and published price guides disagree widely. Here is what actually moves the cost, and the recurring costs people forget.
  • How to choose a website developerPrices are easy to compare and hard to judge. This is a checklist of the things that actually separate a good engagement from a bad one, with the warning signs worth walking away from.
  • Frontend, backend and what your site needsA backend is not a sign of a better website. It is extra machinery that stores data and runs rules. Here is when a business site needs one and when it does not.
  • How long a business website takes, and what slows itCalendar time depends less on how fast anyone types and more on content, approvals and access. Here is what moves a schedule, and how to plan one that holds.
  • What pages a business website needsA page earns its place by answering a question a visitor really has. Here is the core set, the pages that depend on your business, and a test for pages you can leave out.
  • Multi-page or single-page websiteA single page suits one clear offer. Most businesses with several services or products need separate pages, because each page is an address a visitor can land on and share.
  • How to give website feedback that ends the projectLate and scattered feedback is a common reason projects drag. A few habits keep revision rounds short and the schedule intact. They apply to any developer.

Where this leads

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