It’s time to take your website to the next level! As someone who’s been in the web design game for a while, I’m here to tell you that successful web design doesn’t happen overnight. It takes hard work, dedication, and a whole lot of experimenting.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the options available when it comes to web design. Do you go for the drag-and-drop style tools? Or do you opt for something more custom? It all depends on your goals, timeline, and resources.
So where should you start? In this article, we’re going to keep it simple and focus on getting a foundation down so that you can move forward with confidence. I’ll share a few tips and tricks that I’ve learned along the way that can help make your web design journey easier and hopefully more enjoyable!
Choose Your Platform and Get the Basics Set Up
The very first step to web design success is choosing the right platform for your website. Most web designers will go for WordPress or a managed, drag-and-drop website builder like Wix or Squarespace. Whether you opt for the DIY route or hire a developer, make sure that you have a good understanding of how to use and maintain your site.
Once you’ve chosen the platform for your website, it’s time to get the basics set up such as hosting and domain name. You want to make sure that your hosting provider can scale with you as your website and business grow. From here, you should then decide on what type of content management system (CMS) you’ll use. CMSs like WordPress can help you create the most dynamic websites with plenty of features, but could require more time and technical expertise to work with compared alternative platforms.
Finally, don’t forget about basic SEO items such as creating a robots.txt file and optimizing meta tags for each page you create. Optimizing your site from the start will ensure that search engines can properly crawl and index it from the get-go–a major key in making sure visitors can find your website easily when they search online.
Develop a Content Strategy
Before you even start designing your website, it’s important to develop a content strategy first. After all, the design is nothing without the content that supports it. Content comes in many forms, from text and images to video and audio—all of which should work together harmoniously to create an engaging experience for your visitors.
Your content strategy should focus on providing a clear message for visitors as soon as they land on your website. Think about what you want your visitors to understand, how you want them to feel, and how you want them to interact with your content. In addition, all of your design decisions should be based on the content you plan to include in your website.
To start plotting out the structure of your website’s content, answer a few questions: Who is your target audience? What type of information do they need? What action do you want them to take when they visit the site? Once you have mapped out these answers, you will have a better understanding of how to structure your web design around it.
Make Mobile Responsive Design a Priority
One of the biggest tips for getting started with web design is to make sure your design is mobile-responsive. It might seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many sites don’t have a mobile-friendly design.
It’s almost a given these days that most people are accessing your website from their mobile phones or tablets, so it’s crucial that your web design looks great and works well on any device.
Why Mobile Responsive Design Matters
Mobile responsive design ensures that the layout of your site automatically adjusts to fit the size of any device it’s being viewed on. This means your site looks great and is easy to navigate no matter what screen it’s being displayed on.
Plus, Google considers mobile responsiveness when ranking websites in its search results, so having a mobile-friendly design can help you gain visibility online as well.
Making sure your website looks good across all devices is just one part of successful web designing—but it’s an important one! No matter what platform you choose to build your site with, make sure its design is easily adjustable for any device and give your visitors an enjoyable browsing experience.
Test Everything Before Publishing
Before you launch your website, you need to make sure all the components work as expected. This means you need to test everything—the images, videos, buttons, text links, and anything else. Testing will help you identify any bugs or issues before your users can find them.
There are a few different ways to test:
- Testing manually: This involves manually going through each page and functionality on the site and checking for bugs or errors. This should be done on multiple devices if possible, such as mobile and desktop screens of various sizes.
- Usability testing: This is another form of manual testing where actual users are asked to provide feedback on their experience while navigating the site. This can be done in person or remotely with the help of user experience tools such as User testing or Hotjar.
- Automated testing: Automated tests involve scripts that can be written in order to quickly test all aspects of a website at once and identify any potential issues or problems before they become larger issues down the road.
By taking the time to test everything before publishing, you’ll be able to ensure a smooth user experience and avoid any potential disasters down the road.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of secrets to success when it comes to web design. From starting with a plan to taking user experience into account, to getting feedback from others, and making sure to stay up to date with industry trends, there’s a lot to consider.
Ultimately, the point is to ensure that your website does what it’s supposed to: provide a great user experience that’s both visually appealing and easy to use. After all, a website won’t be successful if it doesn’t meet its users’ expectations.
With the right planning and a bit of effort, web design can be a simple and successful process that yields great results. Just remember to keep the user experience in mind, do your research, and stay creative, and you’ll be well on your way to creating a great website.
