HOW TO DESIGN A WEB PAGE?

The field of web design is complicated. Designers and developers must consider the website’s overall appearance and practical design (how the website works). Designing can be challenging because there are so many factors to consider. We’ve put up this tutorial for you to make the task easier.

We’ll concentrate on the main pillars, concepts, and methods in this manual to help you how to design a web page with fantastic user experience for your website.

There are a few steps to create a website page.

Be very clear about your goals before beginning to develop a website. You should decide which form of website will assist you in achieving your goals first because there are so widely different varieties available:

• A website where you may sell your goods
• A website where you can display your portfolio
• A platform for managing and expanding your business
• A resume-focused website that will appeal to potential employers
• A blog where you can impart your knowledge to the public
• A website that hosts events for companies, parties, and weddings
• A website for selling and displaying prints of photographs
• An online fitness booking platform
• A restaurant’s online ordering, delivery, and payment resource

After determining the kind, you require, it’s time to begin the fun part of constructing your website. Keep your main goal in mind as you embark on this path, and consider how the design will help you accomplish your goals. As you develop a website, you’ll discover that the aspects you decide to incorporate will change based on what you want to achieve.

Finding web design examples will help you picture what your future website should look like in this process. Many areas exist where one can get inspiration. It’s also a good idea to browse rival websites. It may provide insight into what customers look for on a website like yours.

Finally, have a look at the most recent developments in web design. The website will look fresh and current by incorporating the most recent design trends. However, remember only to use these features when appropriate for your company or personal brand.

Browse your favourite websites for a while, keeping an eye out for recent updates. Anything that gets your attention? Have you recently visited any websites that seem new? If so, what did they do?

Website trends resemble fashion trends to some extent. Web design trends span simple elements like colours and word art to complex ones like navigation layouts and animations. Choose your preferred theme and keep it updated. The theme is put together by a professional designer, who often does so by researching what’s popular and what’s not.

After deciding on your goal, your next step is to pick the best website builder to help you reach it. Without coding experience, you can design, customize, and publish a website using a website builder (also known as a CMS). On the market, there are dozens of platforms.

The leading brands in the industry include Weebly, Squarespace, Shopify, and Wix. These businesses make website design simple, yet they target a broad demographic. Although they offer some lovely layouts for their websites, there are few options for customizing them for certain reasons. Users in specific niches could find the template choices provided by these companies to be quite constrained.

It’s time to plan out your website layout once you’ve signed into your preferred platform. If you’re starting from scratch, you might want to sketch out the layout of your website on paper before you begin dragging and dropping elements. Using a template, a pre-designed layout made by a qualified designer is an additional choice.

A significant collection of free website templates is available on numerous internet platforms. Whether you want to build a personal website, a blog, or a company website, you may find designs for all of them. To get started, look through the countless alternatives until you discover a layout you like.

Then, you may completely personalize it by taking away, including, or modifying specifics like text, photos, and colour.

You can choose between multi-page and single-page templates from these designs. You’ll probably choose a multi-page site if your website has a lot of content. However, if you have a smaller amount of stuff to display, you can prefer a one-page website. This fashionable option is a well-liked selection for landing pages, event websites, and other short-form content websites.

In plain English, your domain name serves as your online address. It is what your visitors will see in the browser’s address bar immediately following the “www.” For online success, registering your domain name is essential. Internet consumers view websites with custom domains as more reliable and professional.

When picked carefully, a domain name can also aid search engines (such as Google and Bing) in comprehending your website’s subject matter. This is crucial since it increases the amount of traffic to your website. How do you pick a domain for your brand now? Keep it to make it memorable:

Short:

The likelihood of visitors misspelling it increases with length.

Simple:

 Avoid using numbers, symbols, and special characters.

Professional: 

To minimize misunderstanding, your domain name should include your name or your company’s name.

Evocative: 

Use words associated with your company to hint at what you do in your domain name.

Use this domain registration tool to see if your desired domain name is available. Don’t wait to purchase your piece of virtual real estate if your best option is still available. Stay calm if it isn’t. Play around with the word order, or add “the” at the beginning to come up with other versions of your first selection.

When learning how to construct a website, the next step is to select a theme or a template after selecting a website platform and a domain name. It’s a file that a web designer organized and developed that includes a pre-built layout and visual components. Its goal is to make developing a website for non-technical users easier than from scratch.

The resources you can use to find website themes vary depending on your platform. For instance, many are available for free download in the official directory for WordPress users. Since there are so many various themes available, choosing them carefully is a good idea. The following are crucial factors to think about while choosing a website theme:

The feature set: 

It’s best to choose a theme with features appropriate for the operation of your website. For instance, people who run an online store would wish to select a theme with a ready-made shop page and layouts for the best-selling items and discounted goods.

Choices for customization:

 Check the options supplied by the theme for font, colour, and layout. Additionally, some developers might add numerous pre-made pages and icon packs.

Responsiveness:

 Check whether the website theme is mobile-, tablet-, and desktop-responsive.

SEO: 

Theme designers may assert that their product features HTML code that is clear and compact, which is beneficial for performance and SEO. A markup validation service to examine the file can help determine its accuracy.

Compatibility with extensions:

 To prevent the possibility of the website malfunctioning, select a theme that is compatible with the WordPress plugins you intend to employ.

Compatibility with browsers:

 All popular browsers, including Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, should display the theme correctly and work as intended.

Reviews and ratings:

 They can reveal whether the theme functions well and what problems earlier users have had with it.

Latest update:

The product should ideally be updated by the development team every six months. If you use an outdated version, your website may become subject to security problems.

After laying the groundwork for your design, it’s time to get down to business and create the information that will be shown on your website. Your text, logo, videos, and other content are all included in this. To make sure you’re providing original and branded content, use your material as much as feasible. Make sure to get your resources lawfully if you’re not using unique work.

Having a lot of content on your website is fantastic, but always prioritize quality over quantity. Showcase only your best content to attract people’s attention in this age of shortening attention spans.

Make sure your content is wholly branded, and consider your website an online character; all of the textual material, fonts, and colours you choose should reflect who you are or your brand identity.

The creation of your website can now begin. Examine the responses from the first step because they will assist you in creating the visual identity of the website.

If using WordPress as your platform, navigate to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Customize to access the Theme Customizer.

We will start customizing by concentrating on the colour scheme. Let’s begin by deciding on the dominating hue which best captures your personal or professional identity.

Hue psychology, the study of what different colours represent and what kind of impression they make on the viewer, is an excellent resource for choosing a dominating colour. Here is a quick breakdown of what each of the primary colours means:

Red:

Represents love, appetite, or power. Famous brands using this colour include Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Target. 

Orange:

A symbol of friendliness or caution. Amazon uses this colour in its logo. 

Yellow:

Relates to clarity and youth. Also commonly used to grab attention. The energy company Shell features this colour prominently on its branding. 

Green:

Often associated with health, money, and nature. Spotify, Starbucks, and Whole Foods are some well-known brands employing this colour. 

Blue:

 Symbolizes security and trust. It’s also popular among tech brands, such as Facebook and Microsoft. 

Purple:

 Demonstrates royalty, wisdom, and beauty. You may find this colour in candy brands like Cadbury and Milk. 

After picking a dominant colour, pick several additional colours to complement it. The number of secondary colours that can be utilized isn’t strictly regulated. To ensure that the dominant one continues to stand out, only two to three should be featured. To retain readability, it’s a good idea to use a neutral hue for the background and text parts.

It only employs three hues, with yellow serving as the brand’s defining hue. Dark blue is used for texts and buttons, while the white background breaks up the visual information. The outcome is a design that is both eye-catching and pleasing.

A site typically includes the following web pages:

• Homepage.
• About page
• Contact page.
• A blog page.
• Page for a product or service

Go to Pages -> Add New in the WordPress admin panel to create a new web page.

Let’s examine the Appearance and feel of each web page:

HOMEPAGE

Since the Homepage is frequently the first page a user sees, it must explain the purpose and subject matter of the website. Additionally, it should leave a good initial impression so the visitor would want to explore the rest of the website.

Focusing on the unique selling proposition (USP) or a message that conveys what makes your company unique is an excellent design strategy for the Homepage. This advice is helpful for fledgling businesses or developing brands in a cutthroat industry.

To grab visitors’ attention immediately, try placing a big headline and a call-to-action button at the top of the page.

Online store owners might showcase a hero shot—a photo or video highlighting the uses and advantages of their goods and services. Including such images on the Homepage may persuade visitors to explore the website and learn more about what it offers.

ABOUT PAGE

More detailed information on the website’s person or company is available on the about page. It’s an excellent opportunity to share your narrative, convey your beliefs, and build a stronger relationship with the audience.

CONTACT PAGE

How to contact you is displayed on this page for visitors. It typically includes the company’s contact information, including its phone number, email address, social network accounts, and an interactive map showing its location.

Consider including a contact form so that site users can send an inquiry without leaving the page to advance the Contact page. By installing a WordPress contact form plugin, you may complete the task quite quickly.

The following advice will help you create a contact page:

Include a FAQ section:

If you get several inquiries on the same subject, use this advice.

Add only the necessary form fields:

You can merely enable the first name, email address, and an inquiry text field. It can take longer to fill out if there are more fields.

Give options for topics:

The query submissions can be easily organized if this is done.

Short instructions should be included below the form field label:

The user will be able to fill out the information this way appropriately.

A BLOG PAGES

Only individuals or companies who employ blogging as a content marketing strategy are covered by this page.

A typical blog page has excerpts from the blog postings on the left side in reverse chronological order. A sidebar with the blogger’s profile and various call-to-action buttons may be on the right.

PAGE FOR PRODUCT OR SERVICE

This page is essential for people who manage an e-commerce or commercial website. In this category, there are two sorts of pages:

The Catalogue Page

Usually employed by companies that offer a variety of goods or services. It shows a list of the goods you have to offer.

The page for a particular good or service

It provides more information on each item.

It is best to look at your competition for ideas because the design of these pages depends on the goods and services you are providing.

Having stated that, here are some general pointers, you can use:

Include a filtering and sorting system if there are several things:

The user can find their selected goods or services much more quickly in this way.

Display numerous images or movies to demonstrate:

Customers need six to eight product photos to assess whether a product is worth buying, according to eMarketer.

Create a captivating description of your product or service:

To make the copy more persuasive, be sure to address how it might alleviate the problems faced by your target audience.

Show some social validation:

That helps establish credibility and helps purchasers have realistic expectations of the good or service.

Making the website user-friendly and maximizing the user experience are the next steps in learning how to design a website. Here are some crucial factors to take into account:

NAVIGATION

Visitors are more likely to examine all of your website’s information when the navigation is straightforward. In this manner, they can more easily find what they’re seeking, thereby increasing your website’s conversion rate.

Utilizing a flat site structure while building your website is one way to guarantee simple navigation; each page should be accessible with one to two clicks. As a result, the user doesn’t have to open many pages to get where they want to go.

The second strategy is to create a suitable menu. For instance, employing a mega menu, which can provide a long list of navigation options, may be more advantageous for websites with a lot of material.

GRAPHICAL HIERARCHY

Layout in web design refers to the purposeful grouping of a page’s components. Its goal is to draw the visitor’s attention to the crucial details to understand the offer better and perform the required action.

Choosing a layout depending on a user’s reading style is one method to include visual hierarchy in a website design.

The Z-shape format is one prevalent illustration. This design considers how people often scan web content: from the top left to the top right, then diagonally down to the sections below.

Long copy may be organized beautifully with this layout design, making it much easier to read. Additionally, many website designs employ this layout to display numerous CTAs without tiring the visitor.

Make sure there is space between each element on the page. Readers will find it simpler to focus on specific pieces of text this way. Otherwise, the website design could feel crowded, making visitors feel unwelcome.

PAGE SPEED

An essential component of the user experience is speed. According to several publications, a website’s loading time can affect several factors, including bounce rates, click-through rates, and chances of ranking on search results pages.

The size of web design elements can significantly affect how quickly a site loads. For instance, the speed will likely deteriorate if a photo is more significant than 1MB. Google advises keeping page sizes for websites to 500KB or less.

Here are some suggestions for enhancing page load time from the perspective of web design:

Media files should be optimized: Compression tools can be used to minimize file size. Use the lossless approach whenever possible to avoid losing image quality while transferring images.

Create a simple layout: In other words, include the website’s essential components.

Minify the website files if you have access to them: Whitespace, extra lines, and letters with no purpose should all be removed from the code because they make it heavier. Users of WordPress have two options for minifying files: manually or using a plugin.

ACCESSIBILITY

71% of people with disabilities will abandon a website if it is inaccessible, according to research. In the US alone, there are around 61 million people with impairments; therefore, ignoring this market could significantly influence your website’s traffic.

Not to mention that unreachable websites are more likely to be sued, which can be detrimental to their business.

Use URLs that are clear and informative:

Another excellent SEO technique that increases accessibility is ensuring the link and its anchor text include sufficient details about the website.

Utilize an accessibility improvement tool:

These tools can offer every feature required for a website to be more accessible to people with impairments.

Mobile friendliness is more critical than ever, with smartphones accounting for 50% of all internet traffic. You risk losing a significant chunk of potential visitors if you ignore this aspect of the website design.

Additionally, Google views mobile-friendliness as a critical component for ranking their SERPs.

If your website theme is responsive, you’re on the right track. The following are some more approaches to improve the website’s mobile friendliness:

For viewing on a smartphone or tablet, use a hamburger menu:

The three-lined button in this menu bar, often found in the upper left corner of the page, conceals all the links, saving even more screen space.

Create touch-friendly CTAs:

The button should be big enough to tap with your finger. Additionally, there needs to be a lot of space between each button to reduce user error.

Make scrolling easier:

Use tools like a sticky navigation bar, a top-back button, or scroll-triggered effects.

Check the website for any design flaws that can impair the viewing experience before launching it, and test the usability.

Inquiring about the opinions of close family, friends, or coworkers is a simple method. Set up a recorded video meeting and ask them to share their screen while they browse the website and offer feedback on how it looks and works.

A/B testing is an alternative. To assess usability, the designer makes two versions of the same website and distributes them to various user groups. They can compare the two versions when the study is complete to discover which one performs better.

More data-driven insights on what functions well and poorly on the website can be obtained using this strategy. To simplify identifying the component influencing the result, test each design element separately.

Another smart move is to use a heat map. This programme can examine any website and identify the most critical sections or components consumers will pay attention to. It can aid in placing site content more effectively to increase conversions.

Feel free to publish your website once you’ve gathered the data and made the necessary revisions.

Monitoring the site’s performance and making adjustments as needed is the final step in learning how to construct a website. By doing this, you can ensure that the website is optimized and runs smoothly. An excellent tool for this is Google Analytics. It can offer different website performance measures, such as:

Pageviews

 It displays how many pages a visitor views after arriving at the website. The average length of a session. This statistic reveals how long a user stays on a website after their initial visit. Generally, two to three minutes is a decent target to shoot for.

Rate of conversion

 How many people who visit your website do the required action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to an email newsletter, in a given period?

Redirect rates

The percentage of visitors to a website who leave without taking any action. The benchmark for an online store is 20%–45%, whereas 35%–60% of visitors are on a non-eCommerce website.

Traffic sources

 Search engines, social media, email, online advertisements, and referring websites can bring users to a website. This information can determine the marketing channels that will work best for your company.

Audience characteristics

 It can disclose the gender, age, and interests of website visitors. A better-targeted marketing strategy can be created with the aid of such information.

A Google account is needed to use Google Analytics, which is entirely free. WordPress users have two options for connecting the tool to their website: manually adding the tracking ID to the functions. PHP file or using a plugin.

It is effective when a website design makes sure the site is serving its purpose. For instance, if you run a blog, your site design should strive to improve the reader’s enjoyment of the content delivery and reading process.

However, every website needs a unique set of components to improve the effectiveness of its design. Here is a list of attributes that every website ought to have:

User-friendliness

 All functions and components must be available and straightforward to utilize.

Structured Arrangement

The pages must be logically organized to make it easier for the user to find the correct information.

Readability

The layout, fonts, and colours should make it enjoyable to scan the material.

Constancy in Appearance

 The same design components should be used to preserve visual coherence, brand identification, and usability across all web pages.

Optimization of speed

 Every design element needs to serve a purpose for the user and the goal of the website. Redundancies that would otherwise affect the loading time are not allowed.

FAQ

Are you able to create your own website?

Fortunately, there are alternatives, including e-commerce platforms and website builders. You can design and build your own website using these DIY internet tools without knowing a single line of code!

How should a decent website look?

An excellent website is simple to crawl and makes it clear to search engines what they can and cannot index. There aren’t many errors on good websites. A good website loads incredibly quickly from any location in the world. Make sure you take all the necessary steps to ensure that the pages load as quickly as possible.

Which two sorts of websites exist?

There are two sorts of web pages from the standpoint of server-side website deployment: static and dynamic.

CONCLUSION

Although creating a website may seem challenging, it is not insurmountable. You may develop a great site with the correct information and resources without employing a professional web designer.

Even though every website is unique, a good site design often emphasizes user-friendliness, an orderly structure, readability, aesthetic coherence, and speed optimization. When creating your website, be sure to keep these qualities in mind.