Creating a website can be really difficult. Sometimes it requires a lot of time, creativity, and patience to be able to finish just a single page of the whole site. It doesn’t even include yet the design and addition of content. Make sure to be prepared for all of these necessary things to make sure of your website’s success. Always strive to improve your website and make it more appealing to the eyes of the viewers. To help you with this, here is a step by step guide in creating a design for your website.
Know What is Your Website’s Purpose and Strategy
This may sound like an easy point to make but before you head into designing your website, you must clearly have a purpose for your website first. Besides knowing the industry and defining a content strategy, you also have to think about a unique selling point and how you are gonna be unique and different among all of your competitors.
If you have already made the decision just to make a profit or raise your own profile, people will see it through. Make sure to create a brand that is authentic and engaging for all of the people that will have the chance to view your website.
Make Time to Research About the Latest Trends in Web Designing
Web design evolves quickly over time, but there are widespread trends you can gain knowledge from. During this point, it is important to remember that not all current web trends are necessarily right for you.
A range of 48% of people stated that design is the most important factor of a website as it is the one that will catch the visitors’ attention first. This is why it is important to check what other competitors are doing as well. Each sector has different styles, you must figure out what fits in your industry and improve it.
Choose the Platform that You Want
Professional agencies may be the first thing that springs to your mind when the quality web design is discussed, but they can be eye-wateringly expensive. Thankfully, website builders and eCommerce platforms are now available. These DIY online tools let you create and design your own website without the need to know a single line of code. Naturally, there’s a lot of options now available online, each varying in quality. You just need to know which suits your website well.
Choose a Template and Start Customizing Your Website
Once you are clear with your purpose, already knowledgeable about the latest web design, and already have a platform in mind, creating a template must now be created with better ideas. A template sometimes may be referred to as a theme, is the layout of your site. It is the basic appearance before filling out the other belongings. Make it simple but relevant as well.
Decide on Your Specific Branding
By this time, you’re all set to design your website. However, you need to first remember all that you have learned and make sure to put it in good use throughout your website. When you are designing your site, make sure that all of the parts have a certain relation to your overall brand. You need to take note of everything, even the smallest things in your website. Manage the color schemes, graphic designs, and font styles of your website to be able to portray a better visual of your brand’s story. It’s very important that everything on your website relates well to each other.
Add Your Content and Optimize It
Now that you’re done with all of the certain measures, it’s time for you to add your website’s content. Before you add your content, you need to think about two certain things. These are the positioning and optimization of your content. Positioning is all about which parts will your content be placed and how they are placed. On the other hand, Optimization refers to the creation of the content that will surely make it a top result on search engines such as Google and Bing. It’s important that you know the importance and relevance of both of these processes.
You Can Now Publish Your Website
At this point, you are now all set to publish your website. But before you do so, make sure that everything is fine and working well enough. You can ask your family members, friends, or colleagues to try out your website in preview mode to see if there is something wrong with the website. If you want, you can also ask some general members of the public for their opinion by letting them try out your site. There are a lot of things that you should be checking on your site. Here are a few of them:
- Make sure that all of the links work really well and that they send the viewers to the right page.
- Make sure that all of your content is easy to understand and easy to find
- Make sure that you are always less than 3 clicks away from your website’s homepage
- Make sure that your website looks great in any technology used such as desktop, mobile phone, or tablet
- Make sure that loading speeds of your pages are not more than 5 seconds each. There are a lot of free sites that offer free speed tests for this.
It’s important that you make sure everything on your website is working, even with the smallest buttons and links. Do not rush yourself with this process and make sure that everything is checked. Once you are finished with all of these, you are now ready to publish your site and show it off to the world of the internet.
Analyze Your Website and Continue Improving It
If you are thinking that you can now just kick back and relax, there are still factors that you might want to check. It is important to keep track of your website whether it is performing well or not. Most platforms have built-in analytics where you can track things like:
- The views your page is getting
- The time spent of visitors on each page
- Your bounce rate
- Conversion rate (for eCommerce)
These stats help give you an idea on pages that needs improvement. Keep checking your website and keep on upgrading it to keep up to date and compete well with competitors.