Whether you’re designing a website for yourself or a client, it’s important to first clearly define the website’s purpose and goals. All websites strive to deliver eye-catching design and a pleasant user experience, but they also need to reach (and grow) a target audience. As your professional website grows traffic and attracts more site visitors, you’ll need it running like a well-oiled machine. While website maintenance can feel like a big chore, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are some easy steps you can take to stay on top of your site with little investment.

• Pixpa offers a multitude of stunning, pixel-perfect, mobile friendly templates.
• Specifically, you need to plan out how your site will be organized.
• The tasteful use of stylized typography adds to the overall aesthetic of a site.
• This is why it’s a good idea to choose a basic .com website, however you can still work with other domain extensions.

HubSpot gives you access to 500 free and paid website themes through its theme library, which you can then customize to your needs. Purchase a paid Site plan to publish, host, and unlock additional features. Typically, you need code to transform these elements into a webpage and later an overall website as well as a database to store this code. However, Webflow does this for you by merging these components in the Webflow Designer and Editor.

A step-by-step guide to creating a website

You can use cloneables in addition to templates or designing from scratch — just browse the projects in Made in Webflow to find what you need for different types of websites. Those components you see on the left-hand sidebar of the Designer are what would normally be realized via CSS, HTML, or Javascript. When you drag and drop chosen components onto the visual canvas in Webflow, all that code is written in the background for you. If starting from scratch sounds intimidating, consider taking the free Webflow 101 crash course to help you get started on building your first website.

A responsive web design has a consistent look no matter what device users display it on. People latch onto familiar design patterns, making for an accessible route through a site. You likely intuitively know where to look because you’ve seen these patterns before. So, understanding common web design patterns helps you create websites that flow smoothly. Images, interactions, content, and other essential elements replicate the real-world design. Then, these mockups are sent to a test group of users who give feedback on the UX.

Create your wireframes and draft site copy

Additionally, it’s important to link your website with Google Search Console. This valuable tool, also known as GSC, helps you monitor traffic from search engines and identify which content resonates most with your audience. Google Search Console provides a comprehensive view of your website’s performance, offering insights that are essential for its upkeep.

Creating one gives you practical design experience as you learn how to use a content management system. You’ll conduct target audience research, create user personas, and figure out how to use this information to optimize a design for an audience’s needs. Building websites is more accessible than ever, thanks to online courses and thorough design software documentation like that on Webflow University. That said, some fundamental principles make for a solid foundation to build on.

Create your website pages and content

When you create a professional website with Wix, the mobile editor automatically converts your desktop design into a mobile-friendly site. You can then adjust the layout and design how to design a website to suit mobile devices, paying particular attention to readability, text sizing and navigation. You can even make your website an app for users to download to their smartphones.

There are a variety of extensions, like .com, .co, .net, .online, .site and more, but the most common one is .com. This is why it’s a good idea to choose a basic .com website, however you can still work with other domain extensions. This means you don’t want to include numbers, hyphens and other characters within your domain name. You want to be able to easily say your website URL and have someone be able to type it in without any trouble.

How to create a professional website: step-by-step guide

Finally, we recommend gathering your brand assets and information before you begin designing your website. Having a business logo, visuals, and key content to hand will help you save time as you get set up. Her experience in digital marketing includes everything from social media, blogging, email marketing to graphic design, strategy creation and implementation, and more.

If this is the case, you can start to look into different domain extensions. Because user experience and ease of use are just as important to ensure that your website does its job of informing and selling to your customer. From branding to shipping, we’ll walk you through the ecommerce website development process and explain what it takes to set up your own online business. You don’t want the first time anyone sees your website to be launch day. Once you’ve got a draft version of your site, ask friends and peers to test out the user experience.

Start adding your own content

HTML tags are the instructions a browser uses to generate a website. You’ll especially want to know how header tags like H1s, H2s, and H3s create content hierarchy. In addition to affecting layout structure, header tags help web crawlers classify a site, which affects where your site lands in organic search rankings. Every letter, border, and division in a web page layout is made up of lines that form the larger structure. As you learn web design, you’ll learn how to use lines to create order and balance. For example, you might create borders to separate elements on a page or horizontal lines to bookend paragraphs.

You can sift through themes by business or page type, as well as select the features you’re looking for. For example, you might be on the lookout for a homepage template that includes a built-in carousel so you can display testimonials or product images. Choosing a domain name is one of the most important things you’ll do, as it’s the address to your website. It needs to both match your business name and be easy for your customers to type into their navigation bar. Shopify is great for ecommerce, but if you want something more than an online store, it’s fairly limited. And much like Wix and Squarespace websites, you run the risk of your Shopify online store looking similar to several others who chose the same layout.

Step 2: Pinpoint Your Domain Name

Be aware that there are over 100 million active domain names, so all the best ones might be taken. But don’t dwell on it too much — you can always buy another domain name (if needed). The average time to set up a website using this guide is approximately one hour — most manage to build a strong foundation within that time. Most websites only need a domain name and website hosting to work and serve visitors.