Designing your site for the first time can be a daunting task. If your website is lack-lustre, then 38% of your visitors will end up leaving to never come back. So, we will be discussing some of the golden rules to properly design your website. By following these steps, your website will lack nothing.
Your Key Objective
Your site should have a purpose as it will guide your potential visitors on what to do once they are on your page. Why did you create your website? Was it just to display information? Did you create it to obtain sign-ups? Or to sell your products? You need to ask yourself these questions as they will dictate how your site will feel and appear. It is crucial for the landing page to be laser-focused on one deal or item. Plus, there should be a visible CTA to accompany it.
Research the Newest Web Design Trends
Web designs are evolving at a rapid pace. You have to remember that a web trend isn’t necessarily for you just because it is current. 48% of the audience are citing design as an extremely vital factor for a site. You need to do your research and keep tabs on what your competitors are trying to do. Every sector tends to have varying styles. Thus, it is crucial for you to know whether you are interested in fitting in or disrupting the industry.
Picking Your Platform
You don’t necessarily need the help of a professional agency for building a high-quality website design. But instead, you can refer to eCommerce platforms and website builders. These tools enable you to start creating and designing your site. You can do so without knowing even a single code. Some of these platforms include Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy, Squarespace, and Duda.
Choose WordPress
WordPress is an open-source content management system that self-hosts itself. This platform is super popular for designing websites. It offers you full control over how your site should look and also feel. One great thing about WordPress would be its free-to-use nature. However, you do have to be comfortable with coding to use it. Plus, you need a budget for hiring a professional developer.
Choosing a Theme or Template
A theme or template acts as your website’s layout. The majority of the platforms will provide you with a list of themes to pick from. Here, these themes or templates come pre-filled accompanied by an example content. Templates tend to be divided into categories of the industries. It is quite simple for sifting through them and locating the relevant ones. Every category possesses templates that come with built-in features, which prove to be relevant to its industry. It saves you both effort and time.
Branding
When you are designing your website, you need to include everything that reflects your brand. It includes your colour scheme, imagery, and font style. All the key items should play a role in depicting a story. All of them should send the exact message to your visitors.
Content Optimisation
You must pay special attention to the optimisation and positioning of your site. By positioning, we are referring to where the content is sitting on every page and the way it is being laid out. And with optimisation, it tweaks your content for it to rank higher on the search engines like Bing and Google.
Going Live
You need to check everything from head to toe before you proceed in going live. You need to ask your colleagues and loved ones to start testing the website under the preview mode. It will help you ensure if the links are working properly, whether the content is readable, testing the loading speed, checking your site’s appearance and more. Ensure that you are always analysing and improving daily.
