Image of Beautiful Perennial Landscaped Garden courtesy of PathwaystoPerennials.com
Another Analogy to understand how websites are built is to relate it to the process of landscaping a garden.
Keywords are like soil testing
Knowing your soil is as crucial to landscaping as it is to the process of building a house. To work out what will thrive in your garden also depends on knowing the climate and zone as well as the soil type, density, and acidity. For a website, this context is covered by determining the keywords that will underpin your website and its content. Your keywords have to match what you are offering, and what the people who need your products or services are actually using in their searches. A classic case of this is the heating and air conditioning area using the term “HVAC” which makes sense to those in the industry, but few people know to search for that term. The average homeowner is still searching for furnace, gas heating, or air conditioning, or, more specifically, 'broken furnace', 'furnace repair', and 'air conditioning replacement'.
Another important component of keywords can be localization. Do you really want to win business in another part of the country, or in another country altogether? If the answer is no, then you want to use your city and region as part of your keywords. Keyword planning is an essential part of any web development project, so much so that there are great tools available to help you research this. Be wary of web developers who exclude this stage.
Developing with natural strengths and features
When planning a landscaped garden, the architect will consider other naturally occurring elements such as structures, features, slope, drainage, irrigation, and boundaries.
A website architect will look for natural strenghts to leverage such as:
- Required services and products
- Logical structures
- Competitors, and
- Frequency of keyword searches to pinpoint priorities.
The goal is to have the essential information rapidly presented to the seeker in sufficient depth, clarity and efficiency that the seeker is immediately engaged in consuming the content.
Designing for effect 
The designer will work on the plan to present drawings or mockups of features and a planting planner showing colour, height, density, seasonality, fragrance, and function such as pickable flowers or edible vegetables and fruit. This will be matched to the need and preference of the owner.
Likewise in the design stage of web development, the designer will work with:
- The company colours, and logo
- Complementary and contrasting colours
- Imagery
- Fonts
- Icons
- Layouts
- Embellishments that put the finishing touch on a design.
The development process
Once the planning is done, the execution of the design takes shape. Execution includes marking and cutting the design onto the land, turning and prepping the soil, and laying the foundations for decking, pizza ovens, firepits, or driveways. It may involve grading and compacting the soil.
This phase equates to the ‘slice’ phase of a custom website development. The slicing takes the visual graphics and cuts them into sections, segments, and elements that can be used and reused in the construction of the site. This includes one or more page layouts, menu spaces, advertising spaces, mastheads, and calls-to-action.
Colouring inbetween the lines
When the design elements have all been placed out, and the plan for which plants are going where is known, the specific needs of each plant type can be accommodated with compost, mulch, lime, drainage, or other additives. Then the planting according to the master plan can begin! The garden takes shape with height, depth, colour range, and decorative features.
In the case of web development, this equates to content loading where the keyword optimized pages are loaded, styled and finished, calls-to-action and links finessed, events added, galleries and masthead imagery can be inserted, all of which flesh out the bare bones of the developed site.
The end result will be a cohesive layout, that logically draws the eye to the most used information. The balance of white space, text and image layouts all give the professional edge to a web design. Designing your website to a template is like designing your garden to a magazine layout. It can be done, but can have unexpected challends. Your space, soil and sun will almost certainly vary from the location which the magazine garden was designed for, and your results may look unlike the glossy magazine shot.
- Do you have shade-loving plants at full sun and lawn in full shade?
- Is your deck non-compliant having no railing or stairs as this architecture step was missed?
- Is the plant density wrong - do the plants completely cover the ground so you cannot get through to weed or water?
- Or perhaps they are so widely dispersed they look out of place?
- Does your garden clearly belong to your home or is it isolated in a distant field?
- Are the boundaries of your garden, and the town verge, your neighbours clearly marked or is someone else getting the credit for your hard work?
In the world of your website these questions are about the correct positioning of your website in your market. Common web-development faux-pas of inexperience developers include:
- Picking a templated design, only to find a close competitor with the same template
- Picking the same, or similar colour palette to one that a competitor is using
- Overly complicated design
- Non-standard navigation that make it harder for users to find what they need
- Skipping the keyword and content optimizing steps, which leave your site struggling for exposure
Live it, Love it, Share it 
Once everything has been completed to your satisfaction it’s time for a garden party or a BBQ to share the pleasure of this new space with family, friends and colleagues.
For your website, you can hold a website launch party as the release of a new site is a signifcant milestone for your business. Other important processes to get it noticed include:
- Submit a sitemap to the leading search engines so that they crawl and index the site, and do this working with a reputable SEO company who will make sure your new site gets the best attention.
- Claim and link to your Google Places
- Share on social media... regularly!
One final word: Maintenance!
The ongoing state of any garden is a reflection of the time invested in it. Regular maintenance and upkeep will retain the freshness and visual appeal for some years.
It is the same with your website. A reasonable maintenance budget and regular update plan should figure prominently in your thinking to protect your investment.
