How to Design a Website: Step-by-Step Guide With Pictures

Published: June 12, 2024

For example, if you have a blog, the design should work to make the content delivery and reading experience more enjoyable for its readers. Implementing a mobile-friendly website design is crucial, as half of all internet traffic originates from mobile devices. Ignoring this aspect can cost you a sizable portion of potential visitors. A CTA is a strategic prompt encouraging visitors to take specific actions aligning with the site’s goals. These include signing up for a newsletter, purchasing, sharing social media content, or starting a free trial.

For example, registering a .us domain is a good idea if your business operates in the United States. Looking at competitor websites can also provide ideas on what visitors should expect in a business site like yours. If you don’t know who your competitors are, places like SimilarWeb can help you discover them. The best website design software is the one that helps you create the website you need within your budget and with as little hassle as possible.

Can I build my own professional website?

Fonts are like the kids, a variation of a typeface with a certain weight, or size. For example, Arial is a typeface while Arial Black (a bold, heavier version) is a font. Mood boards are ideal in that they allow you to consolidate your findings and transform them into a more visual representation. They can serve as a foundation for when you build your brand’s identity. It’s important to consider not just how you’ll get your target audience on your website, but also how you’ll keep them there.

Hostinger offers 150 responsive templates for various niches, all made with mobile optimization in mind. They ensure your website is mobile-friendly, offering a consistent user experience on desktop and mobile devices. If you’re on the move and wondering how to create a website with a phone, explore our straightforward guide. You can get started with just a homepage for your brand or business, but depending on what you’re building, you’ll likely need additional website pages. Most people will benefit from having an About and Contact information page for website visitors. Consider what other pages you might need, like a blog page or a page for FAQs.

Starting designing a website today

Kendra Rainey, Content Lead at Edgar Allan, recommends writing “notional copy” — content that includes directional text. After you’ve gathered your notes and insights from this research, create a mood board. If you’re working with existing images, a Pinterest board is a good option. However, if you want to dive into more detailed designs, a tool like Figma will serve you better.

how to design a website

Domain name costs generally depend on the extension and subscription period. Without clear organization, people will get confused and leave your site. Information architecture and content mapping provide a blueprint for how each section of the website works together to give a straightforward customer journey. You’ll notice textures throughout popular web designs, from paperlike backgrounds to the colorful wisps of a Gaussian blur. Thoughtfully using texture can make your designs more interesting and give them a sense of physicality. Effective web design requires you to understand the basic artistic principles you can leverage to make your designs more appealing.

Learn the foundations of UX design

This strategy is effective for websites with niche or specialized content where users value unique insights or resources. Whether you’re launching a blog or an online store, there are several ways to turn your website into a revenue stream. how to design a website One common method is through advertising platforms like Google AdSense, where you can earn money based on site traffic and ad clicks. Understanding how your website performs post-launch is essential for making data-driven improvements.

Web design involves several subdisciplines, like user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and search engine optimization (SEO). Good designers should know the fundamentals of these subdisciplines. Ideally, visitors will have such an easy time finding what they need that they won’t even think about the navigation design of your website. Navigation design is the sum of all the elements that people use to navigate a website.

#2. Build Your Brand Identity

Fortunately, today’s website builders and design tools are more accessible and budget-friendly than ever, making it the perfect way to create a well-designed website yourself. Kelly Main is a Marketing Editor and Writer specializing in digital marketing, online advertising and web design and development. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. However, if you want to add more complex features, you might need some coding skills. If you want to try your hand at coding, check out WordPress, as 43% of websites are powered by it.

how to design a website

Those who want to colorfully design a website can follow Nippon Television Art‘s approach. It’s also good to incorporate a neutral color for the background and text elements to maintain readability. A great way to pick a dominant color is by referring to rules of color psychology, a study of what different colors mean and what kind of feeling they can leave on a viewer.

At times, clients will come to you with their purpose, goals, objectives, branding, and content complete and ready to be implemented into a CMS (content management system). However, some clients will rely on your expertise to build a new site or redesign their current one. If you don’t feel confident when it comes to designing a website, you can always hire a web designer or developer to handle things for you.

  • Once you note why you’re building a website, you can check out web builders.
  • After deciding on your dominant color, pick several additional colors to complement it.
  • I would also recommend opting for a recognized Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) such as .com, .ai, .org, or .co.
  • This guide will get you ready to tackle your first project as a beginner.

Building websites is more accessible than ever, thanks to online courses and thorough design software documentation like that on Webflow University. That said, some fundamental principles make for a solid foundation to build on. The following nine steps are an ordered approach to learning these principles so you can fast-track your education. We will also focus on branding and marketing essentials to guarantee your site is as effective as it is beautiful. You can add content blocks to a blank page to create a new layout, or manipulate the blocks within a templated layout page to create rows, columns, or even overlapping content.

A step-by-step guide to creating a website

By default, the latter gives you five credits to generate five free images. Depending on your goals, you may want to scale the site’s functionality with additional features. Blogging capabilities, for example, help enhance user engagement and visibility in search results. With eCommerce functionality, you can turn the website into an online store. All Hostinger hosting plans come with a free domain, simplifying hosting and domain management under one account.

how to design a website

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