What is the ideal ways to set up a website for yourself and your business? I will try to explain the fundamental steps, my lessons learned and I will give you some tips and hints. I will go into detail how to use your web designer, the types of site building you should choose and which tools are necessary for your project.
Understand What You Need
Before you start to put your idea in action, ask yourself some questions to make sure your idea is still valid: Do you know your customer? Are they unique? Do they need a specific solution? Do you provide it? Do you know your product? It must be unique to them, otherwise they won’t buy it.
Are you ready to deal with the traffic that is waiting for your site? How big do you want your site to be? Do you want to have a homepage? Just a blog page? Do you have a team of web designers?
As always, consider your budget, time and the completion of the website. I know you might want to get started, but you should check the time frame first, check how long it will take to complete your project, how much you will have to invest and if it’s worth it. If you don’t have a huge budget and you have a lot of sites to complete, you might consider hiring a web designer or a developer. But don’t forget that getting this step right will lead to the main goal of your website: creating your products and showcasing them.
Know Your Customers
When you set out to build a website, you don’t always know what your audience needs or what problems you’re solving. But if you know exactly what your audience is looking for and how your target audience typically types information into the search engines, it can be a lot easier to design a website that meets the audience’s needs.
The key is to do more than just sell your product or service. You need to solve problems, educate consumers, and promote your brand.
Pick a target audience. You should tailor your website to the target audience that you identified earlier. This will help your website stand out from all the other sites that your audience is already surfing. The goal is to find a differentiating factor for your website and try to make it as prominent as possible.
Identify the problems your target audience faces. Spend time learning what your target audience needs and how they currently search for the information they need. Talk to your target audience to determine how they typically search for the information they need.
Design and UX
User interface (UI) design is about creating visual components of a website or application, such as button states, layout, and widgets, and then giving them various qualities such as simplicity, familiarity, and flexibility.
To get started, you need to define the main features of your website. You’ll want to focus on things like the kinds of content, your marketing campaign, and the ways your website’s design affects your conversion rates. You want to find an area where you can improve the functionality of your current design, or maybe an area that needs an upgrade.
Huge importance is placed on designing attractive and intuitive interfaces for apps and websites, and UI should strive to achieve this. An interface should make it easy for users to accomplish tasks and should offer adequate support for the user’s needs.
The focus should be on crafting a user experience that follows the user’s actions or intentions and encourages them to use the application or web service. Use of typography, color, and visual hierarchy can improve the user experience.
It is important to have a proper layout for a website or application. Layouts in apps should be minimal and therefore should be easy to use. The main area for UX designers is using minimal means in making things beautiful, fast, and effective. A site or app shouldn’t bog the user down with details or numbers. A design that is easy to use will please most of the users.
Testing, Measure and Improve
Before making your website online, ensure proper testing have been carried out. This include functional testing, usability testing, interface testing and compatibility testing on various mobile devices and tablets. Also, remember to check your website loading speed for desktop as well as mobile using tools such as Page Speed Insights from Google.
When testing different aspect of the website such as layout, color or headlines, remember to measure key indicators such as users visit, time on site / bounce rate and lastly conversion rate.
Designing a website is one of the most important things you can do to build your business. The process can be confusing and time-consuming, but it’s worth it in the end