Does your mind run in circles when you think about website design? Do you feel overwhelmed when you think you need to know about website design from A to Z? Well, we are here to help you with just that. In this guide, we talk about everything related to website design. From the aesthetics to the technical aspects, we explore every minute detail to help you get a full grip on website design and how to achieve the perfect one. We are also particularly going to explore what makes a website highly responsive and functional. So let us get started.
The scale of a website
Websites are designed for all kinds and types of businesses and organizations. From smaller businesses to larger ones, every business requires a website regardless of its size and scale. It is also interesting to know that nowadays most of the new budding businesses only operate online and have no physical outlet at all. Still, they are able to scale larger online and reap greater profits, all thanks to the wonders of a great website.
What makes a website effective?
An effective website design has a few components that make it functional and successful. There is nothing more inviting than a website that is well-made, easily navigable, aesthetically pleasing, highly responsive, efficiently structured, quick to load, and easy on the eyes and mind. Always remember that a great website is one which can be easily accessed through different devices, smoothly.
What is web development?
Web development is the development of the main structure of a website on which a website is built and decorated. Typically web development includes developing, coding, designing, creating content, scripting, front, and back-end development, securing the website, and reviewing any loopholes. Web development is also divided further into [UI] user interface and [UX] user experience. Together these components make up the entirety of the web development process. To choose a website development agency or company, always go through their portfolio to ensure that they provide the best website design services and are unparalleled at their job in the industry.
To know further about UI and UX, just Google a guide to UI/UX designs, and you will be served with thousands of blogs explaining UI and UX designs in detail.
Let us now take you through the whole process of building a website from scratch.
Choosing a web development team
This is the most important part of the whole web development process because it is the web development team that is going to manifest your ideas about the website into reality and also provide you with valuable input, based on their experience, to make it better and highly functional.
Understanding purpose and defining goals
With a great web development team in place, all you need to do now is to get understand thoroughly the purpose of your website and the goals your business wants to achieve with it. Your goals can range from creating an audience to selling your products, from providing online assistance 24/7 to catering to a certain niche, and from advertising your products to creating awareness.
Structuring the website
What you need to do next is create the structure of your website. Simplicity and minimalist approach is the way to go about it. A complicated website with too many options and pages to explore is a big put-off. Content, imaging, descriptions of products, and basic elements to include in the website are covered in this step. Essentially, the first rough draft or template of your website is sketched in this step.
Organizing content
This doesn’t mean that all the content you need for the website is pre-written in this phase and is designed. Rather it means that in this step of the web development process, you precisely know what content you require, and the sequencing is also planned here. From what the business offers to how the products are made, ingredients to secure payment methods, from testimonials to new updates, everything falls under the umbrella of content. Also, note that the content does not need to be only text, it can also include images.
Developing a timeline
A timeline provides great help to the developers as well as the business. It provides a clear picture of what steps are to be completed and when. Having a timeline in place lets both parties know exactly when the website will reach the completion stage. It also ensures the timely completion of milestones in the website development process.
Set a budget
Often this aspect of the web development process is completed well before hiring a team. But, it is often the case that, after thorough discussions with the web development team, new options are explored and new elements have been discovered that need to be added to the website. This means tweaking and often expanding the budget pre-set for the web development project.
In this step, after thorough discussions, mostly a budget is decided mutually by both parties. It is also interesting to note that the budget increases with more functions that are to be added to the website. But be rest assured, investing in a website is one investment that makes up to 50X the initial investment.
Creating the website
In this step of the development process, the final work on the website starts. It is all based on your brief to the web development team and the branding and content you aim for them to include in the website are also included. Coding, which is an essential part of the development process is cracked in this step. The basic wireframe of the website is formed in this step.
Search engine optimization
This is the step that goes well in the same space as website creation. Rather, it is done well before the website content is written and conceived. This is so because the entire point of making a website is to drive sales and traffic to it. So what is the whole point of a website if it is not search engine friendly, and is hard to crawl and rank by the search engines? Search engine optimization solves this issue and makes sure that the website that is created is well in line with the requirements of the search engine bots and is easily rankable.
Testing and review
When the final website is developed, it undergoes a series of testing to ensure smooth running on multiple and different devices. Furthermore, it is also checked for security. The website is then reviewed by the clients to ensure that any changes required by the clients are done well in time before the launch.
The final launch
When all revisions are complete and the website is well in place. It is time to launch it!
To conclude it all
Your website makes the first impression, as we said before. What we did not say was the website can also prove to be a turning point for your customers in their journey on your website. An exceptionally made website is one that is designed to keep the customers’ requirements in check. With a great website in place, there are more than 90% chances that the visitor on your website is going to convert into a great lead and then on to a customer that is loyal too! It is high time to get your website out there. Happy designing!
