Did you know that there are almost 2 billion websites on the World Wide Web right now?
Sure, only about 200 million of them are active. But still! It’s pretty incredible to see how quickly the internet has grown over the last few decades.
If you’re thinking about throwing your hat in the ring by setting up your own website, learning how to design a website is going to be of the utmost importance. If you don’t have a well-designed website, it’s going to result in your site getting lost in the crowd.
Interested in learning more about website design? We’ve put together a handy-dandy guide on how to design a website. It should help you get your new site up and running in no time at all.
Table of Contents
Start by Coming Up With a Clear Purpose for Your Website
What exactly is going to be the point of you setting up a website?
Do you want to create a website for your small business so that you can start selling things online? Or do you want to build one so that you can share your thoughts on a specific topic with the world?
Either way, it’s going to be pretty much impossible for you to put together a successful website without a purpose for it in mind. You could argue that coming up with a purpose is even more important than learning how to design a website.
Take a Look at Other Websites to Get Inspiration
Once you have a purpose for your website in mind, the next order of business is going to be searching for inspiration for your site. You should look around at other websites that you like and see what it is that you like about them.
Ideally, you should check out at least a few dozen other websites so that you can pull ideas from them for your own site. It’s very easy to get inspired by poking around on other sites that have great website designs.
Pick the Right Platform for Creating a Website From Scratch
In order to begin the process of designing a website, you’re going to need to select a website platform. This platform is what you’re going to use as the foundation for your entire site.
More often than not, most people tend to use WordPress as their preferred website platform. It’s fairly easy to figure out how to use WordPress even if you’re not a tech whiz, which is what makes it so appealing to so many people.
You’ll also need to sign up for a website hosting service in addition to picking out a website platform. This service is going to host your website for you once you’ve created it and make sure that people are able to access it as soon as it goes live.
Choose the Right Theme for Your Website
Regardless of which website platform you decide to go with, you should be able to choose from a variety of themes for it. You should sift through your different options and see which ones you like the most.
While you’re doing this, you should also think about your site’s purpose and make sure that the theme you pick out helps your site to live up to its mission. If you don’t land on the right theme, you could end up dooming your site from the start.
Find Ways to Make Your Website Design Unique
While it’s usually a good idea to go with one of the available themes for your website, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find little ways to make your website unique. Outside of adding unique content to it, you can also play around with the color scheme, the fonts that are used, and more.
You should experiment with different website design touches to see what seems to work the best for your site. You want your site to turn heads when it goes live without being too distracting when people visit it.
Tinker With Your Website to Improve the User Experience Design
How easy is it to maneuver around on your website once you have it all designed and laid out? That’s going to be a question that you’ll want to consider when you’re starting to put the finishing touches on it.
In this day and age, all websites need to have a great user experience design. If your site doesn’t, people are going to struggle to navigate around on your site while they’re on it.
Your website should load up very quickly when people visit it. It should also have a series of easy-to-find pages on it, including a homepage, an “about” page, a contact page, a blog page, and more. And of course, it should be simple to scroll around on each page and move it up and down.
Don’t sleep on the importance of providing a solid user experience to people. It’s what’s going to keep them coming back to your site time and time again.
Test Your Website and Work to Make It Even Better
Before you launch your new website, you should always test it out—and then test it out some more!—to ensure that every aspect of it is working. You should test it yourself, and you should also have family members, friends, colleagues, and others test it out for you and provide you with feedback.
You might even want to go as far as to use a heatmap to see what parts of your new site appeal to other people most. This Decibel.com guide breaks down heatmaps for you and shows you how to use one to your advantage. A heatmap can set you up with invaluable information that you can use to improve your website, both now and in the future.
Knowing How to Design a Website Is Important to Your Site’s Success
You might have the best idea in the world for a new website. But that doesn’t mean that your site is automatically going to be a success!
You need to learn how to design a website prior to building your new site. Your website design is ultimately going to make or break your site, so you should take what you’ve discovered about it here and use it to your benefit.
Get more info on designing winning websites by reading the other articles found on our blog.
