# How we build a website, step by step

# How we build a website, step by step

Lincoln Alves · 2026-10-30

Five steps from the first question to the first weeks after launch, and what you see and approve at each one.

Every website we build goes through the same five steps. Each one ends with something you can see and approve before the next one starts.

### 1. Briefing

 We ask a lot of questions: what the site is for, who it is for, what visitors come looking for and what should happen once they find it. The answers become a site map and a technical plan: CMS, languages, forms and integrations.

### 2. Design

 We design the screens for mobile and desktop, with your brand and your audience in mind. You follow the work online and comment on each screen, and we revise until the design is approved.

### 3. Development

 Front-end turns the approved screens into pages that work in every current browser. Back-end builds what you do not see: content structure, databases, APIs, integrations and security.

### 4. Testing

 Before launch we test forms, scripts, links, speed and accessibility on current browsers and devices, and check each item against what was agreed in the briefing.

### 5. Launch and support

 After your approval the site goes live, and the team stays on it during the first weeks for adjustments. From there, the site can move to a monthly retainer.

 Want to start with a briefing? [Tell us what you want to build](/contact).

> No step starts before the previous one is approved, in writing.

## More from the journal

- [Journal](/blog.md)

- [Machine speed, human signature: how we use AI without losing accountability](/blog/machine-speed-human-signature.md): AI drafts a lot in our pipeline. People still decide. Here is where AI sits in each stage, and where it does not.
- [TYPO3, WordPress or headless? Choosing a CMS for a multilingual site](/blog/typo3-wordpress-or-headless.md): Three questions decide it: who edits, how many languages, and what your IT allows.
- [GEO: writing for people and for AI answers](/blog/geo-writing-for-people-and-for-ai-answers.md): Search is no longer only a list of links. What changes in content and code when answers come from AI.
- [React Native in 2026: when one code base is enough](/blog/react-native-in-2026-when-one-code-base-is-enough.md): Where cross-platform wins, and the cases where we still write native modules.
- [Verification and validation: how we check every delivery](/blog/verification-and-validation-how-we-check-every-delivery.md): Done is defined at the start. At the end, we check against it, item by item.
- [Working from Curitiba with teams in Vienna and New York](/blog/working-from-curitiba-with-teams-in-vienna-and-new-york.md): Hours that overlap, rituals that travel, and what we learned about working across time zones.
- [Our origin: from code partner for agencies to AI-first engineering](/blog/our-origin.md): Coopers started in 2013 as the team agencies called when they needed code. What we kept from those years, and what changed.
- [How we build a website, step by step](/blog/how-we-build-a-website.md): Five steps from the first question to the first weeks after launch, and what you see and approve at each one.
- [Monthly maintenance: why a website is never finished](/blog/monthly-maintenance.md): A site nobody looks after gets slower, less secure and harder to find. What monthly maintenance covers, and how we run it.

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HTML: https://coopers.digital/blog/how-we-build-a-website