Beyond simply knowing your industry and defining a content strategy, you need to think about what your USP (unique selling point) is, and how you want to come across.

People aren’t stupid. If you put yourself out there just to make a profit or raise your own profile, people will see through it. Your website’s design is directly linked to your brand, and it needs to come across as authentic and engaging.

What are you trying to achieve?

Once your purpose is clear, the focus shifts towards what action you want visitors to take when they land on your website. Is your site there just to display information? To sell products? To get sign-ups?

The answer to this will ultimately dictate how your website looks and feels. Using ecommerce as an example, one crucial element of your design is your landing page.

According to Crowdspring – a top digital branding company – your landing page should be laser-focused around one product or deal, with a clear CTA (call to action) accompanying it.

Taking this one step further, we caught up with Wolfgang Bruns, a conversion rate expert at a global tech company. We asked him about the importance of having separate landing pages for different visitors, in order to individually tailor offers and products – a process known as customer segmentation. Here’s what he had to say:

48% of people cite design as the most important factor of a website, so it’s important to take your time and look at what competitors are doing. Each sector will have different styles, so it’s vital you know whether you want to fit into your industry, or disrupt it.

Alex Vasili – a leading brand expert – believes you should always research by industry, rather than age or gender. When speaking to us about web design, he said:

This goes to show the importance of knowing what you want before diving into the physical design itself. We’ll come back to color in the ‘Branding’ section, but to help you out, here are some current trends that are taking the internet by storm.

Micro-interactions

Micro-interactions are small animations which takes place when a user engages with a website. For example, if you ‘react’ to a post on Facebook, it will pop up with the relevant, animated emoji.

Micro-interactions are there to inject a website with some personality. Micro-interactions create a human touch point that actively makes your visitors feel like they are communicating with your website.

Micro-interactions can take many forms – clicking, hovering, scrolling etc. – and are important in building a relationship with users. They might not suit serious white-collar businesses, but most sites could benefit from a little interaction.

Brutalism

If you thought you wouldn’t be learning about architecture in this guide, we’re afraid you’re sadly mistaken. Brutalist web design takes its inspiration from mid-twentieth century building construction, and although many people see it as ugly, it just works.

Spanish fashion house Balenciaga was one of the first major companies to adopt a brutalist website back in 2016. And much like its seasonal trends, brutalism has quickly caught on. 

Brutalism derives from the French word ‘brut’, meaning ‘raw’, and offers a basic, bold and striking approach to web design. It’s not for everyone, but those looking to disrupt their industry will certainly want to take note.

Chatbot Support

Here’s a stat for you: businesses spend nearly $1.3 trillion every year on customer service requests. It’s estimated that chatbots could reduce this by 30%.

Gone are the days when chatbots were mere gimmicks – now, they’re becoming ever more essential to customer-facing services.

The major draws of chatbots are time-efficiency and cost-effectiveness. They work 24/7, which frees up your time to get on with other matters. They also save you the expense of employing staff to work as customer service representatives.

Sure, chatbots aren’t perfect, but their emotional intelligence and ability to provide tailored support is improving by the day. There’s never been a better time to install one.

Luckily, there is another way: website builders and ecommerce platforms. These are DIY online tools that allow you to create and design your own website – without needing to know a single line of code!

Naturally, there are tons of options out there – of varying quality – but we’ve put in the legwork and researched the best on the market. Through a combination of expert research and thorough testing, we can now reveal the best options for designing your very own site.

Below, we’ll run through the top three options for both regular websites and online stores. First, though, let’s address the elephant in the room: WordPress.

What about WordPress?

WordPress.org is a self-hosted, open-source CMS (content management system) – but all you really need to know is that it’s the most popular platform for designing a website.

WordPress gives you total control over the look and feel of your website, and is technically free to use. We say this because, in order to get your website live, you’ll actually need to pay for web hosting, security, a domain name, and any additional plugins or themes you need.

The biggest issue with WordPress, though, is that it’s not really suitable for the average Joe. Unless you’re comfortable with code – or have the budget to hire a professional developer – WordPress will prove near-impossible to use.

For this reason, we’d recommend that people who are building their own site stick to website builders and ecommerce platforms.

Designing Websites: Website Builders

Unless you’re looking to sell online, website builders are the most effective way for non-tech whizzes to create their own website. If an online store is what you’re after, skip to our ecommerce platforms section. 

From our expert research, we’ve been able to establish the 10 best website builders available to you today. All cater to different needs, but for a general overview, take a look at our quality scale below:

Wix

Wix is generally regarded as the best website builder on the market. Its easy to use drag-and-drop editor gives you total creative control, allowing you to add in all your content and position it wherever you see fit.

From thoroughly testing the platform ourselves, we can confirm Wix lives up to the hype. Have a look at our final research scores and see for yourself:

A template, sometimes referred to as a theme, is the layout of your site. Think of a template like the structure of your house – it forms its basic appearance, before you fill it with all your belongings.

Most platforms will offer you a range of templates to choose from, which come pre-filled with example content.

Templates are usually divided into industry categories, making it super simple to sift through them and find ones that are relevant to you. Each category will have templates with built-in features that are relevant to that industry, saving you the time and effort of adding them in later.

For example, if you wanted a website for your new coffee shop, you may browse the templates listed under ‘cafe’. Most of these will already have a contact form, menu page, and contact details built into the template, as they are all related to what a cafe website would require.

All templates can be previewed before you begin editing, so you can get a clear idea of what it looks like – and, more importantly, whether it fits your needs.

Rolling with the example of a coffee shop, it’s worth checking out what other cafes are doing.

Research suggests that website users find information faster by scrolling, rather than by flicking across different pages. So, if your website just needs some basic information, it may be worth considering a one-page template.

When designing your site, you should think about how everything you do relates to your overall brand. Everything from the color scheme to font style and imagery play a part in telling your brand’s story. It’s important they’re all sending the same message.

Color Scheme

Color is one of a brand’s biggest communication tools. In fact, according to Color Matters, a signature color can boost brand recognition by 80%.

There’s a lot of psychology behind people’s perception of color, so it’s important to understand how it’s used in relation to your industry. To help you out, here’s an infographic we’ve put together that helps explain what different colors mean and how they’re used.

Most brands have one dominant color, then two or three secondary colors. Blue is the most popular color, with one third of the top 100 brands using it in their logo.

If you want your site to be in-keeping with modern trends, then vibrant colors are the way to go. Color experts, Pantone, recently voted ‘Living Coral’ as color of the year for 2019:

Font Style

Similar to color, the font you opt for has a big impact on what people think about your website. The average website user will read about 20% of the text on any given page, so it’s crucial to entice them with an appropriate vibe.

Naturally, white-collar businesses will want to use classic styles of font. Fonts like Arial and Helvetica are synonymous with professionalism, and therefore make sense when discussing serious matters.

A more fun or playful brand, however, may wish to explore more abstract fonts. It’s important to strike a balance between interesting and readable, though – the last thing you want to do is alienate your readership.

As a general rule of thumb, you should avoid using Comic Sans font. That is, unless you’re planning a kids birthday party!

Imagery

Images are how you turn a modest website into a visual feast.

Visual content is useful for increasing clicks and engagement, but on a more basic level, images simply stick in the mind. According to one study, if we hear a piece of information, we’ll only remember 10% of it – but if you add a picture, you’ll remember an incredible 65%.

That said, be careful not to overload your site with images. Lots of high-quality images might look great, but they can slow your site down. Web users are impatient, and will vote with their keyboards if your site doesn’t load quickly.

Positioning refers to where your content sits on each page, and how it’s laid out. Optimization, meanwhile, is the process of tweaking content to help it rank higher on search engines, such as Google or Bing.

Below, we’ll discuss the technicalities of both, and explain why they’re important.

Positioning

Research into reading patterns teaches us that people commonly consume content in an ‘F’ format. In simple terms, this means that website users will scan a page in a shape that resembles an F.

This picture is taken from a Neilson study, where the group tracked the eye movement of readers on a web page.

This is why navigation bars on websites are nearly always displayed across the top of the page. It’s the first thing people are drawn to when landing on the site.

It’s good practice to lay out your content with this in mind, so as many people as possible see the important stuff.

Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO, for short) is when you make changes to your website in order to increase the quality or quantity of people landing on your pages. Think of SEO like this:

If you own a racing car, the aim is to win a race. You can have the fanciest looking car, but it’s what’s under the hood that’s going to make a difference.

When you make tweaks to the engine, replace the tyres, or lighten the chassis, what you’re doing is optimizing your car. It may look the same, but you now stand a far better chance of winning the race!  

SEO is much the same. Your site may not look any different, but making tweaks to content, images, and responsiveness can have a huge effect on how highly it ranks in a search engine’s results.

Here are just a few of the most important things you can do when designing an optimized website:

Metadata

Beyond your actual content, page titles and descriptions – known as metadata – are the easiest way of telling Google what your site’s all about. Metadata appears in the search results, and allows users to discover what’s on your webpage before they click on it.

Image Compression

Images are typically quite large files. This means that having a lot of imagery can slow your site down, leading to people becoming impatient and leaving it before it’s even fully loaded. This is known as ‘bouncing’ off the page.

To put that into some context:

So, what can you do about it? Why image compression, of course!

There are tons of free online compression tools that will reduce the number of pixels in your images. And while it’s important not to distort the quality of imagery, compressing pictures can have a big impact on page loading speeds.

Image Alt Text

Alongside compressing images, another important part of SEO is to tell Google what an image represents. Unlike text, search engines can’t ‘read’ images, so by adding alt text to an image, you are effectively helping them understand what it being depicted.

Alt text doesn’t appear directly on your website – it’s added in when you’re editing – so you don’t need to worry too much about making it your most inspiring work (as long as it’s representative of the image.)

Mobile Responsiveness

This is a big one. In 2018, 58% of all internet browsing took place on mobile devices. That’s why Google favors websites that format properly on mobile. If yours doesn’t, you’ve got a serious problem.

Most templates these days are mobile responsive, and will automatically reformat your content to fit various screen sizes. It is, however, worth thinking about if you want anything to appear differently to mobile users.

Nailing this will improve your users’ experience, and earn you some serious SEO brownie points.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is where you direct users to another webpage on your site via a hyperlink. This is generally done when you mention something that you have related content on. This tells Google and co. that you are an authority on the subject, since you have multiple articles about it.

‘E.A.T’ stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. By writing in-depth about a subject and internally linking to more content related to it, you are showing search engines that you really know your stuff, which should in turn help you rank highly.

• Established your website’s purpose
• Researched the latest web design trends and done some competitor analysis
• Settled on a platform and theme to build your website with
• Decided on your branding (color scheme, font style etc.)
• Created your website and optimized its content

Now, it’s time to check everything works before you go live!

Ask your family, friends, and colleagues to test the site in preview mode (all website builders and ecommerce platforms will have this), and see if they find anything wrong. You can even get members of the general public to test it too, and to offer their thoughts.

Some common things you want to check for are:

• All your links work properly, and they direct users to the right page
• All your content is readable and easy to find
• You are never more than three clicks away from the homepage
• Your site looks great across desktop, mobile, and tablet
• Loading speeds are no more than 5 seconds on any page (use a free site speed tester to check this)

For more details, you can find loads of UX (user experience) checklists online. It’s important to be as thorough as possible before you go live. Think of it like a restaurant’s opening night:

Your restaurant interior, menu, chefs, and entertainment could all be spot on, but if you’re understaffed, it will leave a bad first impression on many customers – something that’s hard to recover from.

Always take the time to properly check your website before it goes live – first impressions count. After that, you’re ready: publish your site, and send it out into the online world!

It’s important to keep track of how your website is performing. Without meaning to sound like a pushy personal trainer, you have to keep working and improving!

Most platforms have their own built-in analytics, or at least have an app you can install. Alternatively, you can connect your site to Google Analytics, so you can track things like:

• How many page views you’re getting
• The amount of time users are spending on each page
• What your bounce rate is
• Conversion rate (for ecommerce)

These stats, known as behavioural metrics, help give you an idea of which web pages need some attention. They also help you spot where you need to improve your SEO.

The truth is, a web designer’s job is never truly done. If you just sit back and admire your work, others will overtake you.

We’re not suggesting you need to be making by-the-minute changes, but keeping on top of your site’s performance and shifts in web design trends will go a long way.