Performance Website Creation Process

January 21, 2025

Designing and launching a website that truly performs well involves strategy, precision, and understanding your unique goals as a business.

At Nivo, we’ve refined our approach into 10 meticulous steps, each designed to ensure your website surpasses expectations.

Read on for the process behind out bespoke website design service and see how we turn your vision into a high-performing reality.

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Step 1: Internal Research

Getting to know you, your business, and your goals.

The internal research phase about understanding your vision and building a meaningful partnership. We take the time to explore your business, its strengths, and opportunities, setting the foundation for a website that reflects your goals and stands out in the market.

We begin with a team capability audit to identify roles and key contacts. Using the EOS framework, we then ask eight key questions to clarify your direction:

  • What are your Core Values?
  • What is your Core Focus?
  • What is your 10-year target?
  • What is your marketing strategy?
  • What is your 3-year picture?
  • What is your 1-year plan?
  • What are your Rocks (priorities)?
  • What obstacles are holding you back?


This step ensures we capture the essence of your brand and identify areas for improvement. Understanding why you do what you do is critical – it shapes the content, tone, and overall voice of your website.

Finally, we’ll work with you to outline clear project objectives and provide an actionable checklist. This ensures we’re aligned on priorities and equipped to deliver a website tailored to your vision. You’ll also receive a detailed audit and vision document, offering insights into your current website (if applicable), business goals, and the value we bring to your bespoke project.

How Do I Get Started?

We’re excited to collaborate on your website project.

To begin, share a brief overview of your business with us. Get in touch and let’s kick off the journey to creating a website that works as hard as you do.

Step 2: External Research

Getting to know your audience.

After understanding your business and goals, the next step is to focus on your audience. This involves gathering insights about your clients and potential customers to ensure your website meets their needs.

To do this effectively, we step into your customers’ shoes, building detailed profiles of typical and ideal users.

Tools like Google Analytics and Google Trends help us uncover their behaviours, preferences, and motivations. We also leverage AI to identify distinct customer groups and predict their behaviour, providing a comprehensive view of your audience.

Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis

Understanding what your audience is searching for is key.

We identify target (or ‘money’) keywords for your site by conducting thorough keyword research using marketing tools such as SEMRush, Ahrefs and more. This will help establish a strong SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy for your website.

Competitor analysis is equally important. By examining your top competitors – their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses – we gain insights into opportunities for differentiation, helping you tap into new market areas.

How You Benefit From External Research

External research is essential for creating a website that truly connects with your audience. By uncovering customer behaviours, pain points, and preferences, we ensure your site offers unique value and stands out in your industry.

This stage lays the groundwork for a user-friendly, SEO-optimised website that attracts, engages, and retains the right customers while positioning your business for growth.

Step 3: A Strong Marketing Plan

The backbone of driving traffic to your website.

Our marketing team begins by mapping out the essential pages for your website. Each page will target a specific keyword and have a different purpose. A V1 website page map will then be shared with you. This map will outline every page that we need to create to maximise on all opportunities. Once agreed internally with your team, we can start writing any necessary content. 

The marketing plan also incorporates a robust funnel-building strategy. This strategic pathway guides potential customers through key stages: awareness, interest, consideration, and decision.

By carefully designing content and features for each funnel stage – Top of the Funnel (ToFu), Middle of the Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu) – we nurture leads, build trust, and maximise conversions. Learn more about our approach to ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu here.

We don’t stop there. Post-launch, we develop a comprehensive marketing strategy across platforms, including Paid Ads (PPC), SEO, and Social Media, to amplify your reach and deliver long-term growth.

The Importance Of A Thorough Plan

Without a targeted marketing strategy, even the most visually stunning website risks falling short of its true potential. Why would you want a website that looks great but doesn’t reach the right customers? 

With a clear, data-driven strategy from the start, and through working closely with our marketing professionals, we can ensure that your website gets seen, brings in the right type of traffic, and converts visitors into customers. 

STEP 4: Branding

Your Key to Standing Out

Strong branding instantly boosts your credibility and makes visitors trust that you will deliver top-notch products or services. It ensures that people remember you even after they’ve closed their browser tabs.

The real secret to strong branding in website design is storytelling. Captivating storytelling will keep your visitors coming back and will help them to convert into paying customers.

Messaging should be clear, consistent, and speak directly to the needs of your audience. What solutions does your business offer? Our team collaborates closely with you to refine and strengthen your messaging so it resonates with your target market.

Our Branding Process

To get your branding on point, we will first select a domain for your website (if applicable). An appropriate domain helps users to identify your company. 

Next, we dive into the visual elements that bring your brand to life, including a cohesive colour palette, typography, logo, and iconography. These elements ensure your audience can instantly recognise your business and its values.

We can also recommend a new or alternative email hosting platform and create a new signature design to reflect your brand and strengthen client communication. 

Once this is all in place, you’ll drive more traffic to your site, capture your audience’s attention, and keep them coming back for more.

Ready to build a brand that stands out? Explore our Brand Development Services to create a powerful identity that drives results.

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STEP 5: Content Creation

The Heart of Your Website

The content stage is where we bring your website to life through compelling words and visuals. Our copywriting team starts early to ensure the website’s design complements your key messages and supports future SEO and paid ad strategies down the line.

We’ll also work with you to source high-quality, relevant images that enhance your website’s aesthetic and maintain brand consistency. A visually appealing site with a modern image bank can create a lasting impression.

Our in-house graphic designer can craft unique illustrations and graphics that set your business apart. These design elements not only elevate your website but can also be repurposed across various digital platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram, ensuring your brand remains consistent and recognisable.

To convert visitors into loyal customers, your website needs clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA) points. Our team will collaborate with you to develop CTAs and lead generation tools, such as forms, newsletters, and questionnaires, all aimed at driving engagement and conversions.

Post Launch Content

The success of your website doesn’t end at launch – it depends on fresh, regularly updated content. Our team will also help you develop a post-launch content strategy, including a mix of blogs, videos, and cornerstone content that captures attention, encourages sharing, and drives the right traffic.

Let Nivo Digital help with fresh ideas, stunning visuals, and effective strategies. See more on our Content Marketing Services here.

STEP 6: Web Design

Transforming Your Ideas Into A Captivating Online Presence

To coordinate the creation of the website, our team reviews the sitemap with you. Together, we will identify the priority content to work on. From a marketing perspective, we pay close attention to the target keywords and intent behind each web page when making the decision of what type of content to prioritise. 

We will discuss your website’s navigation. This involves thinking about how your website will function and the user journey once they land on the site. Well-planned and thought through navigation results in a better user experience. 

A key part of the design stage is creating mockups of a number of web pages to show you how your site will look. This step allows us to align the design with your vision, and we’ll seek your feedback regularly, making adjustments as needed.

Finally, we’ll focus on designing your website’s header and footer – essential elements that are often overlooked. These areas help guide users and provide easy access to important information, such as contact details and links to your social media channels.

STEP 7: Development

Bringing Your Vision to Life

After agreeing on the static layouts, we integrate the new designs with a WordPress theme that is built for speed and editing. We recommend using a WordPress builder that is user-friendly as it will enable you to easily update the content yourself should you wish. 

We’ll install WordPress on your preferred hosting platform and set up the admin panel for easy management. At Nivo, we’ve perfected a combination of plugins, themes, builders, and hosting solutions to ensure your website performs at its best without compromising speed or functionality.

The development process kicks off with the creation of a staging site on your chosen hosting platform. If you opt to host your website with us through our Web Hosting Services, this step becomes even smoother.

A staging site offers several advantages:

  • Provides a secure space for testing and refining features, updates, or design changes without impacting the live site.
  • Encourages collaboration between our team and yours, allowing for adjustments and feedback throughout the process.
  • Ensures a seamless transition to the live site, delivering a polished user experience.


Using the sitemap we developed earlier, our web designers and developers will create the site’s core pages. Once these are complete, we’ll present the website for your review. Key stakeholders can assess the site, ensuring it meets your expectations and incorporates valuable feedback.

After incorporating your feedback, we’ll build the remaining pages, adding the agreed content and imagery. If you’re transitioning from an older site, we’ll import existing blogs and set up redirects to maintain your SEO rankings and prevent broken links.

We’ll also finalise the site’s navigation for an intuitive user experience, optimising it for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. This ensures your website is accessible and functional across all platforms.

From an SEO perspective, we’ll:

  • Optimise meta titles and descriptions for each page.
  • Add alt text to all images for accessibility and search visibility.
  • Build a strong internal linking structure to enhance navigation and ranking potential.


By completing these steps pre-launch, your website is primed to reach your audience effectively and perform at its best from day one.

The Benefits of a Well-Executed Development Stage

An efficient website development stage will ensure that your website is thoroughly tested before the site goes live. With your website in the capable hands of our expert team, you can relax in the knowledge that your site will not only provide a smooth user experience but is also going to be error-free when it launches. 

By focusing on SEO during this stage, your site is also set up to rank higher in search results, increasing visibility and attracting the right audience.

STEP 8: QA Testing

Testing, Testing…

We thoroughly test for errors, broken links, and functionality issues in a development environment. Our QA team also checks responsiveness across devices to guarantee a seamless user experience. Any bugs identified during testing are resolved prior to launch.

Next, we’ll share the site with you on a test server for your review. You’ll have one round of minor revisions before we proceed to the final launch.

We also analyse website performance, including site speed, and provide insights into customer behaviour. This data helps optimise your site for a better user experience and higher conversion rates.

To ensure compliance, we implement GDPR best practice to ensure that your website, and therefore your business, is fully compliant with the most recent rules and regulations. We can advise you on best practices and a privacy policy to include on your website if needed.

STEP 9: Launch

Launch Your Website and Watch Your Business Soar

With your website finalised, we’ll prepare a detailed launch plan. Working with our marketing team, we’ll announce the launch date through social media, email newsletters, and press releases to maximise visibility.

On launch day, we’ll handle all technical aspects to ensure everything runs smoothly. Our team will monitor the site closely in the hours and days following launch to address any unexpected issues and provide prompt support for inquiries or concerns.

Key steps during the launch include:

  • Running a broken link checker to ensure all links work perfectly.
  • Setting up GDPR-compliant banners and cookies to track user data legally.
  • Adding reCAPTCHA to forms to protect your site from spam and bots.
  • Activating a maintenance or “Coming Soon” mode on your current site (if required), especially for sites with complex functionality or login areas.


Once live, we’ll transfer admin and form emails to you, ensuring you receive important updates on your site’s performance and health. Additionally, we’ll add your site to our status monitoring tool, so any downtime is promptly addressed.

The final step is enabling search engines to index your website, ensuring it’s discoverable by your target audience.

The Benefits of a Stress-Free Launch

A seamless launch is essential to showcase your website in the best possible light. Technical issues or slow loading times during launch can tarnish user experience and damage your brand’s credibility.

With our team managing the process, you can trust your website will launch on time, fully functional, and optimised for success.

STEP 10: Growth

The Journey Doesn’t End Here

After your website launches, the journey doesn’t end – it’s just getting started. Our team will remain available to support you with any questions or challenges you face.

We’ll provide comprehensive CMS training for key team members, ensuring you’re confident in managing and updating your site. To make this even easier, we’ll create tutorials you can access anytime and offer video call assistance when needed.

We can help you regularly publish content, develop organic growth through our SEO services, engage with prospective customers on social media, and drive traffic into your purchasing funnel. If you want to amplify your reach, we can set up targeted Google Ads or Microsoft Ads campaigns, offering a fast and effective way to generate quality leads.

Beyond paid advertising, we’ll help you grow your online presence by creating and promoting a range of marketing materials, such as videos, infographics, articles, and resources. Our team will strategically amplify these assets across platforms to ensure they reach your target audience in impactful ways.


Your website’s journey doesn’t end with a great design—it’s about continuous growth and making every step count. At Nivo Digital, our 10-step process ensures your website is not just built, but optimised for long-term success. From strategic planning to seamless development, and ongoing growth support, we’re here to help every step of the way.

Discover how our Website Services can bring your vision to life, or contact us to start your journey today!

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About Us

A team of creative and marketing professionals, with a track record of helping businesses large and small make their mark in the world through next level website experiences, powered by storytelling that resonates.

Get In touch

We’d love to meet you and find out how we can help you tell your story. Take the first steps towards writing your next chapter and book a discovery call with our team today.

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