Building a new website can be difficult. You will need to think about things like web design, hosting, security, and ongoing maintenance. If you don’t have any web development experience, the learning curve can be steep.
However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t start designing your own attractive website. I’ve put together a short guide to help you get the most out of the web design process.
The following steps will help you start designing your new website:
- Understand What Your Site Needs To Do
The first step on your journey to web design excellence involves defining exactly what your website needs to do and how it’s going to do it. I’d recommend sitting down with a pen and paper and sketching a basic layout for your site, noting important features such as music players, live video streams, or email signup boxes.
- Research Web Design Trends
Next, you need to do a bit of research into the latest web design trends. This shouldn’t be too difficult. Simply type something like “modern web design” or “latest web design trends” into Google, hit the search button, and read a few of the most relevant articles.
- Decide How You’re Going To Build Your Website
It’s also extremely important to decide how you’re going to design and build your website. You pretty much have two options:
- Website builders. Website builders such as Wix and Weebly are becoming increasingly popular. They tend to offer all-inclusive packages which will help you streamline the design process.
- Content management systems (CMS). Alternatively, you could use a self-hosted CMS such as WordPress.org or Drupal. These tend to take a bit more work to set up, but they give you full control over your website and its files.
I’d recommend using WordPress, as this will allow you to focus on putting together an attractive design and give you full, long term control of your website.
- Define Your Brand
One of the most important parts of the web development and design process is defining your brand. Think about things like:
- Your logo.
- Colour schemes and pairings.
- What fonts you want to use.
- What audience you’re targeting.
Developing a clear brand is crucial if you want to succeed in the competitive online world. It’s extremely important to make sure that it remains consistent throughout your website and across your social media profiles.
- Choose A Template And Start Designing!
If you have decided to work with a website builder like I recommended, you should be able to simply choose a template and begin customizing it through your platform’s editor. Make sure that you always keep the user experience at the front of your mind, and make sure that your website remains consistent throughout.
Although web design used to be limited to highly-skilled tech professionals, the rise of things like website builders and online design tools means that absolutely anyone can build their own website. I’d recommend starting with a website builder like Wix, but make sure that you do your research before settling on any one platform.