Designing a new website is an interesting journey. Website design is a craft that is easy to learn but hard to master. There are lots of mistakes that can be made, especially if you want your website to be compliant with the newest guidelines published by Google and other search engines. After all, you’re building a website in order for you or your company to be more easily discoverable online and to attract new clients. The changes brought to the way search engines index and rank websites and web pages make the website design industry one of the most dynamic digital industries in the world. Being able to stay ahead of your competition is crucial for business and having a responsive, user-friendly website that abides by the latest guidelines is essential for this.
Lay Out Your Plan
The first and most important part of designing a new website is laying out a plan. Why do you need a website? Who are your visitors? What is your offer? These are all questions that need to be answered before starting the design. Depending on the type of business that you have, there are different types of website designs that you can work with. Write down your goals and expectations and find a good way to measure your results. You can bring changes to the plan as you go but it’s important to have a starting point. Even if you’re redesigning an already-existing website, this step is still important. If the website needs a refreshing new look or new functionalities, write them down first.
Create A Sketch
Whether you lay down a sketch on paper or you use a digital app, creating a sketch will prove useful in the long run. If you’re going to outsource this to a professional web designer, he will take care of this step based on your recommendations. Moreover, a good designer will also provide insights and solutions to some of the issues that may arise from the initial sketch. Website design is all about finding and solving problems. These problems could be related to user experience, website architecture, or something else. To cover as many aspects of the website as possible, your sketch should take content, layout, and functionality into consideration.
Go Through Different Typographies
Finding the suitable typography for your website is important. You need a text font that is easy to read, especially when your visitors have to read long paragraphs. Moreover, if your text is going to contain special characters, such as accents or cedillas, make sure that the font you’re using allows those characters. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a less aesthetically pleasing situation.
Make sure that there’s enough contrast between the background color and the font color. Too much or too little contrast can create a tiring experience and might drive users away from your website even if your content is top-notch. There are very few reasons why you should use more than one typeface and background. As much as possible, consistency should be key throughout the pages.
Add Motion
Creating motion on your website is a great way of keeping visitors from leaving your website too soon. Dynamic effects and interactive content are some of the ways you could add motion to your website.
Everything you add on your website should be seamless and in relation to everything else. Talk to your designer for ideas that you can implement.
It’s important that all these dynamic additions are well-optimized as you can’t have them slow down your website too much. A slow website will rank poorly on search engine results pages.
Refine Everything On A Regular Basis
Paying attention to detail is crucial when designing your website. A sloppy design will drive your potential customers away and it will be bad for your business. Treat each of the website’s components equally and make sure that the quality is as high as possible. You can come back and redesign some of the components in time if the need arises.
Make sure the media files posted (images, videos, audio files) are high-quality or that your web page graphics are not blurry. Furthermore, you have to keep refining the parts of your website that become outdated. Website architecture or functionality can easily become outdated once a new Google ranking algorithm is released.
Work Closely With The Designer
It’s recommended to work with a professional web developer for your website design, especially if you have a more complex project. The most important thing to remember when working with a designer is that you have to collaborate and work closely together. This allows the designer to better understand your ideas and your vision for your website.
If you’re not happy with the initial draft or you think that there are discrepancies between what you wanted and what the designer produced, speak up.
Communication is important, especially when your vision might not always be the same as the designer’s. Another thing to take into consideration is that the designer may also have good ideas. Listen to those ideas, as it could be something you haven’t considered before.
