Website Project Plan.

Cotswold Web is a custom website design and development agency, which means every site we design is unique and bespoke for your business. If quality, performance, customisation, functionality and visual appearance matter, then Cotswold Web is the right agency for you. We are not about doing things fast and cheap, instead we take the time to focus on functionality, design and performance quality.

No two websites are the same, but here we outline an estimated timeline to design and develop a site in a perfect scenario. Bear in mind that there are only a handful of projects that will fall into this scenario of perfect content, perfect timing and perfect delivery. For us, it is far more important to give clear expectations and be transparent with our clients about the complexities involved in custom design, development, marketing and performance, to ensure we produce the very best website for your business.

A computer , tablet , and cell phone are displaying a website that says your dog is safe in our hands.
Website Timeframes
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One page website
Two weeks
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Five to nine page website
 Five to eight weeks
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Website with more than 12 pages 
Six to 12 weeks
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Advanced website
12 to 18 weeks
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Enterprise website
12 to 24 weeks
Our website project plan timeline estimates are based on:  
  • Three versions (designs supplied)
  • Reviews and revisions provided within three business days from the customer
  • Content 100% complete by phase 3
  • No additional functionality added to the project after phase 1
  • Approvals received within three business days of request
  • Project staying on the initial timeline (if the project moves off the initial timeline for any reason, resource allocation will be interrupted and your project will be rescheduled, depending on all project plans)

Website Design and Development Project Plans are divided into the following phases:

Phase 1: Project Planning
  • Web design questionnaire, strategy and project launch meeting
  • Internal stakeholders meeting
  • Specifications outline/ Technology outline
  • Finalise site structure: Pages
  • Setting up project in project management system (Design, Dev, SEO, Social media, Mobile apps etc, depending the on the level of service you have subscribed to)
  • Establish tasks, responsible parties, milestones and deliverables
  • Setting up server and installing proper software

Phase 2: Design (Desktop)
  • Home page design (header, top menu, body, footer)
  • Home page design revisions* V1, V2
  • Inner page designs (eg About us, Contact us) 
  • Inner page design revisions* V1, V2
  • Blog listing and blog post design
  • Blog listing and blog post design revisions * V1, V2
This phase will take a minimum of 10 business days and could take significantly longer, depending on the customer response time, clarity, decisiveness, and the number of rounds of changes included in their particular plan. 

The main reason why things can slow down during the design phase is customers failing to provide timely or clear revisions. 

One to three versions can be done in 10 business days
Four to six versions can be done in 11-20 business days
Seven to nine versions can be done in 21-30 business days
*Your plan includes a specific number of design revisions (the standard number is two). If you require additional rounds of changes, you can easily add them to your plan for £200 per revision.

Phase 3: Content Development
The time taken to complete the content development phase can be one of the most difficult to predict. 
When you are planning a new website design and development project, don’t forget to set aside a budget specifically for content. 

This is the most underestimated part of a web project and also one of the most important. It can cause the longest delays and, if not done correctly, the most missed opportunities for a new website. 

Content is key to SEO, marketing and, most importantly, to conversion. The time taken for the entire content transfer, creation and management process will depend on the level of your SEO investment and goals. 

*All content must be received at this stage to continue with the development phase. Cotswold Web will transfer all content from your existing website to your new website. 

The content management phase includes the following steps:

  • Navigation creation
  • Navigation optimisation
  • Content creation (you can write and provide the content yourself or outsource content creation to Cotswold Web’s own team)
  • Content upload
  • Content styling (including all necessary SEO work)
  • Image research, collecting, purchasing and posting
  • Interior and home page linking
  • Integration and linking of social accounts 


If you have any additional content additions or changes to your website, you can easily make them through your new website’s content management system (CMS).

Phase 4: Project Planning
This is an overview of the basic development phase. (If we are creating an Advanced or Enterprise site for you, this is where the custom coding for advanced functionality would be.)
  • Slice all of your Photoshop Designs 
  • Install database
  • Design global style sheets (CSS), based on agreed design styling (this is for one browser eg Chrome and desktops)
  • Home page development and coding
  • Header, configurable navigation/menu, Ajax/jQuery sliders - rotating banners, special effects and fading images, widgets, body, custom elements, footer
  • Interior page development and coding
  • Pages, body, sidebars, widgets, favicons etc
  • Blog pages and listing development and coding
  • Redesign the website for all browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari etc)
  • Redesign the website for responsiveness on mobile devices, tablets etc
This phase can take a minimum of 15 business days. The more custom designed pages and custom functionality you have, the longer the development phase will take. 

Development time can be extended by things like ecommerce, membership systems, forums, reservations systems, listing systems, directories, mapping functionality etc. Using these could put you into an Advanced or Enterprise website category.

* If you require additional rounds of changes, you can easily add them to your plan for £200 per revision.
Phase 5: Pre-Live Checklist
  • On page SEO 
  • URL Optimisation/ 301 Redirects
  • Google Analytics
  • Heading tags (H1, H2, H3)
  • Page titles
  • Meta descriptions
  • Meta keywords
  • Categories/ tags
  • Interior linking
  • Image optimisation
  • Heatmaps installation (if on a care plan)

Phase 6: Quality Assurance and Go Live
  • Site review
  • Test header
  • Test navigation
  • Test forms
  • Test links
  • Test functionality
  • Test footer
  • Review site settings
  • Favicon
  • Test social links
  • Prepare the server for go live
  • Set up MX records for email hosting
  • Move files into live server environment
  • Change DNS links
  • Domain propagation – this can take up to three days

Phase 7: Post Go Live audit

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Once the site is live, the following activities will take place: 
  • Final site cross browser audit
  • Mobile responsive audit
  • Forms testing
  • Promote your site - on social media, blogs, email newsletters etc, depending on the terms of your individual marketing plan
  • Provide hosting, support, maintenance and upgrades as needed. Support can be reached at https://www.cotswoldweb.co.uk/support
  • Full site errors report and corrections
  • Webmaster reviews
  • Submission of site to search engines

Training:
Training 1: We will complete a one hour training session with you, ensuring you know how to add pages, posts and media files and make basic content changes to your new site. While your plan allows for Cotswold Web to transfer a specific number of pages to your new website, you can add unlimited pages or posts yourself through your content management system, either before or after go live.

Training 2: One hour of additional training, delivered up to 30 days after your site goes live.

Once your site is live, it will be archived in our project management system and all support will be provided by our Help Desk Team. You can access customer support here: https://www.cotswoldweb.co.uk/support 

Phase 8: Marketing

Ongoing plan - Google Ads, reporting, measurements and analytics 
  • Google Analytics installation check and connect to Google Ads
  • Google Ads set-up and tracking of landing pages
  • Google Ads tracking of phone calls
  • Google Ads tracking of sales for ecommerce
  • Google Ads product feed set-up
  • SEO and page rank reporting – for SEO customers
  • Full site SEO report and improvements
  • Webmaster reviews
  • Landing page checks and improvements
  • Quarterly complete site review and evaluation 
Ongoing plan – Social, content and blogging 

  • SEO: Content strategy and content creation
  • SEO: Building backlink strategy and Domain Authority
  • SEO: Building rank for selected keywords and key phrases 
  • SEO: Measurement
  • SEO: Reporting 
  • Social: Marketing calendar
  • Social: Strategy 
  • Social: Content creation 
  • Social: Graphics creation 
  • Social: Promotion and marketing 
  • Social: Reporting

Additional functionality or project timeline extensions

Additional functionality may require additional time. Some of the factors which may require extra time, investment and resources, include:

Design changes in the development phase
Lengthy time for review feedback, revisions and approvals
Membership system
Ecommerce
Directory system 
Listing system
Additional custom designed and developed pages
Custom coding
Custom landing page design and development
Scheduling systems
Registration systems
Additional security 
High traffic websites
Media/ news websites with extended category functionality
Wishlist function
Complex content transfers and content revisions
High volume content transfers and clean up
Aggressive SEO plans

This is not an exhaustive list and there may be other reasons why things take a bit longer than expected. But we will always aim to stick to the timeline as best we can, and will make sure we keep you informed of any issues and delays as they arise.

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