Creating a website is an essential part of digital marketing that helps to broaden your audience and start driving more leads to your business. But here comes the question of how to build a visually attractive and intuitive experience. As users, we all want to leave pages loaded with elements and countless pop-ups ASAP. At the same time, we want to stay on websites with catchy interfaces yet elegant and simple in design.
For sure, the best and fastest way to achieve the latter is to agree on a web design contract with an individual or an agency. The main thing here is finding your people, so before hiring, make sure to get acquainted with the designer’s portfolio and check their feedback on social media and freelance platforms. It may also happen that you want to dive into this sphere deeper and decide to build a website on your own.
Regardless of your choice, here’s what you need to know about designing a website:
Gather a list of functional requirements
Yes, the design work starts here, far away from opening a graphic editor. The first thing to do here is to understand the purpose of your website. Start with defining the type of the website. E-commerce, a web-application, an informational website, or a business portfolio are just to name a few. Then, gather all the business requirements and use-case scenarios. These can be making a purchase on the website, subscribing to a newsletter, reviewing your media, etc, to establish an understanding of the basic feature list. If you do it with a designer, it may be easier, as it’s the stage of compiling the project brief.
Prototyping the structure
Once you’re done with the business requirements and have the list of functionality the website should have, it’s high time to start prototyping the UX flows. You can research the best practices to decide on the menu items, the number of pages and how they will be connected to one another, and the hierarchy of elements. This will help you to visualize the final results on a high level.
Research the web design trends
Web design trends are changing with time, and something that was popular 3 years ago will not be relevant now. So if you are not sure what you are looking for, try to surf the Adobe community, portfolios of successful freelancers on Dribbble, Behance, or other web-design libraries for inspiration. Try to analyze what specific things caught your eye and how they would fit in the concept of your website.
Place CTA wisely
Note that a CTA is one of the most important elements on any page. It’s basically the reason why you brought a visitor here, so you need to keep it clear, prominent, and simple. Don’t try to put several CTAs on one page, as it may have an adverse effect. The attention will be diffused between them, and the chances to get users to register to your course or buy a product are reducing.
Add a brand touch
The last step in the web design process is giving it a unique flavor. Decide on your logo, fonts, illustration style, and color scheme. If you hadn’t developed these brand guidelines yet, creating a website is high time to start doing so. This will help users to associate a positive interaction experience with your company.
Web design is only one step on the way to launching a fully-fledged online presence, yet, it’s one of the most powerful tools for marketing and brand development. So following the tips above can help you to make it right from the very beginning.
And once the design is done, it’s time to get this journey further to code it, publish, and monitor the users’ activity introducing changes based on the heatmaps, conversion, and feedback.
