How a Corporate Website Is Built: The Full Process

Steps 1-2: Discovery and Scope

The project starts at the table, not the keyboard. The first two steps pour the ground for everything after — and remotely, they happen as structured video sessions with written outputs.

The discovery meeting: the business talks, the agency listens

What do you sell, to whom, who competes, what must the site achieve — and what is the Turkey entry plan behind it? The meeting’s output is a one-sentence goal: “fifty quote requests a month from Turkish buyers.” No project starts without a goal, because without one it can never be known to have finished.

The current state gets examined

If a site exists — even your home-market one — its traffic, working pages and accumulated visibility get photographed. The photograph makes the demolition plan intelligent: what works is kept, what fails is razed. The systematic form of that photograph is a digital audit.

The scope document gets written

Page list, feature list, copy ownership — including who writes the Turkish — exclusions, calendar: all in one document both sides read comfortably. It is the contract’s annex and the project’s constitution. The scope items in detail sit in the turnkey guide.

The calendar gets signed two-sided

The agency’s production durations and your approval durations are written together — with the time difference already priced into the rhythm. Experience says: projects stretch not in production but in waiting for approvals. Your place in the calendar is your share in the project’s speed.

Steps 3-4: Architecture and Design

The ground is ready; visible production begins — but structure comes before colour.

The sitemap gets drawn

Which pages exist, which links to which, along which path does the visitor walk to the form? This map is the site’s spine. A site without a map is a building without corridors: pretty rooms, no passage.

The wireframe gets approved

Every important page’s box layout is drawn: heading here, proof there, form here. Arguing over this colourless skeleton is cheap; arguing over coloured design is expensive. The skeleton approval is the project’s most valuable approval — and in a remote project, the clearest written record of what was agreed.

Visual design gets built with the identity

The approved skeleton is dressed in brand identity: colour, typography, visual language — your global brand adapted for Turkish reading habits without losing itself. The craft of that adaptation belongs to the identity guide. Design thinks phone-first; in Turkey the majority of visits arrive there.

Approval rounds end on a routine

Staged approval works: skeleton, homepage, inner pages. Feedback in each round is written and consolidated — the format that survives time zones. Opinions arriving drop by drop split the round and melt the calendar.

Steps 5-6: Content and Build

The two most underestimated steps live here — and the projects’ hidden dam.

Content runs parallel to design

If copy starts when design ends, the project stalls; a practised agency runs both in parallel. Writing for the screen is its own craft: short sentences, headings for the scanning eye, one idea per paragraph — and for you, one more layer: native Turkish written for Turkish searchers, not translated afterwards.

The build stays faithful to the approved design

The code table turns the approved design into a working site: forms, speed settings, device behaviour. Requesting design changes at this stage is adding windows to poured concrete: possible, but expensive.

Population happens with care

Placing copy and images onto pages is not mechanical: heading hierarchy, image-text balance and internal links are built here. Careless population makes even good design look cheap — in any language.

Measurement is built before launch

Analytics, form tracking and search registration do not wait for launch day; they are built first so data flows from day one. An unmeasured launch is starting the term without report cards — and from abroad, the report card is your only window.

The Process’s Common Accidents and Seatbelts

The same accidents repeat at the same steps — and cross a border, each costs a little more. Knowing four of them upfront means mostly never living them.

Accident: “We’ll sort the copy later”

The most common crash: design finishes, the stage waits for words, the project hangs for months. The seatbelt is copy ownership written page by page into the contract — including who writes the Turkish — and content starting parallel to design.

Accident: drop-by-drop revision

An opinion Monday, an idea Wednesday, a new request Friday: the round never closes — and across time zones, each drop costs a day. The seatbelt is feedback given once per round, written and consolidated. One collected list beats five scattered messages.

Accident: last-minute scope growth

“While we’re at it, let’s add this too” sounds innocent; it melts the calendar and the budget. The seatbelt is writing extras onto a phase-two list: launch first, additions after. Adding to a living site is always possible.

Accident: everything squeezed into launch day

In a project where testing, redirects, measurement and training share one day, that day forgets something — guaranteed. The seatbelt is calendaring the final week: testing its own day, the move its own day, training its own day, with the time difference planned in.

Steps 7-8: Test, Launch and Handover

The final two steps are the work’s insurance; skipped insurance collects on launch day.

Testing runs on a list

Forms tried on devices, every link scanned, speed measured, the Turkish read once more by a native eye. The list is boring; but a launch without it delegates the test to visitors, and a first impression cannot be recalled.

Launch is a relocation protocol

Domain pointing, old addresses mapped to new ones, notification to search engines: in rebuild projects this protocol insures the accumulated visibility. A move without redirects can lose years of work overnight — visibility a market entrant cannot spare.

Handover completes with training

Credentials are transferred to you, the panel is taught — in an interface language you can work in — the backup routine explained. A good handover leaves a site that can live without the agency; a delivery built on dependency is not a delivery.

The first month is watched together

Launch is a beginning, not an end: the first month’s data is read, small snags smoothed, measurement goals confirmed. This watching period is the project’s last step and the site’s first step of life. The steps’ time equivalents sit in the timeline guide; our own working order on the web design page.

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