Many people think they should be techy to create a good website for their own or their business.
The good news is you don’t necessarily need coding knowledge to realize your dream of designing a website.
To design your website on your own, follow these steps:
Step 0: Plan and Research
This one is the strategic part, rather than the operational part, of making a website. So, you should do this before you actually commence the web design.
Planning may seem to be an obvious and easy task. But knowing your target and how you want to reach it makes the whole process much more effective.
Define a clear purpose for creating your website. Think about your expectations from the visitors to your website:
What actions do you want them to take when landing on your website? Do you want to sell products online? Provide information on a specific topic? Or just looking for visitor sign-ups?
Whatever your intention of building a website is, you should think your strategy through.
Moreover, study the recent web design trends and see what’s best for your purpose.
Research your competitors and check what styles they have used. Decide whether you want to follow your industry trend, or disrupt it with your innovative design.
Step 1: Choosing a Platform
You can outsource the process to any of the 10 top web design companies to make a professional website for you.
But if you’d like to save the expenses and do it yourself, there are simple DIY tools to choose from.
There are lots of platforms to create a website without coding knowledge. Here we introduce the best four of them:
Regular Website Platforms
Here are two of the most popular platforms to build regular websites:
WordPress
WordPress or WP is an open-source CMS (content management system) that is technically free to use. Though, you should pay for your domain name, hosting services, and paid themes or plugins.
Wix
Wix can be regarded as the best website builder, as its easy drag and drop tool allows anyone to make creative websites. It has a high design flexibility and is very easy to use.
Ecommerce Platforms
These are two of the most popular platforms to build online shops:
Shopify
Shopify can be regarded as the best eCommerce platform, comparing to its peers. It enables you to integrate it with various platforms and channels, like different marketplaces and social media.
Wix eCommerce
Wix eCommerce is good for those who want to add an online shop to their regular website. It has great sales features and is easy to use.
Step 2: Themes and Customizations
No matter if you choose WordPress, Wix, or any other platform to build your website. You will need to choose a theme and customize it based on your purpose.
Step 3: Branding Decisions
You should consider how everything on your website relates to your brand. Learn about the psychology of colors in web design and choose a signature color palette that boosts your brand recognition.
Step 4: Content Optimization
Now that you have decided on the platform, chosen your template, customized your website for your brand, it’s time to add content.
There are two things you should consider in this step:
First, you should position content on your website pages, in an effective way.
Then, you should optimize content for search engines, by learning about SEO principles.
Step 5: Go Live!
After adjusting everything you had on your mind, it’s time to go live.
But before that it’s better to ask your family, friends, and colleagues to check out your site in preview mode.
You can also use online UX checklists to see if you have covered all you intended on your website.
Step 6: Analyze and Improve
Well, congrats on your new website! Now it’s time to analye how visitors deal with your website and what you can improve.
There are online tools to check your page views, amount of time they spend on each page, conversion rate, etc.
Look for the behavioral pattern of your visitors and how you can answer their requirements by improving your web design.
