How to design a website: 13 essential steps

In an ALMOST fully digital world, having a website is the best way to get more users to know your brand and be interested in your products or services.

Up until a few years ago, creating a website was an almost impossible task for any ordinary person. Only professionals with programming skills had the ability to create websites, and even for them it was complicated.

However, today there are several tools with which you can design your website without any programming knowledge. At the very least you will need to know these tools to create your website.

Here are 13 simple steps to design your website quickly:

13 steps to create a website

You will be able to design your website by following these steps. Some steps may change order depending on the needs of each user. However, we want to introduce you to the most basic things you need when designing your website:

1. Define the purpose of your website

The design, pages and functionalities of your website depend on its purpose. An online store is very different from a blog or a brand's business page.

The first thing to ask yourself is: what do I want to achieve with my website? Do I want to sell a product, offer my company's services, or make relevant content and make money with traffic?

Depending on the answers to these questions, you will know the type of website you should design.

To provide you with a guide, here are the 6 most common types of websites on the Internet:

A blog: the purpose of a blog is to provide relevant information to the user on a specific topic. Its main form of revenue is web traffic and Google Ads.
An online store: designed for businesses that want to sell their products digitally. An online store is used to sell any type of product.
A landing page: used for marketing campaigns or for the website of companies that offer a particular service.
Business page: designed for companies that want to have a presence in the digital world and offer their services online.
A digital portfolio: ideal if you want to publish and promote the work you have done previously.
An events website: ideal for organizing parties, weddings and other types of events.

It's also important to keep in mind that there are mixed websites. That is, they have several of these features.

For example, there are online stores and digital portfolios that have a blog, and the blog is the way to attract users to the products and services offered.

Once you know the type of website you are going to design, you can move on to the next step.

2. Choose a platform to manage your website

The easiest way to create your website without knowing web development is to use a CMS. A CMS is a content management system that will allow you to create your website easily and publish posts in no time.

The most popular CMS today are Wordpress and Wix. Wix is ideal for portfolios. It’s very easy to use and will allow us to make different types of designs to publish our previous work.

Wordpress is more recommended for SEO. A large percentage of websites today are created in Wordpress, and its hundreds of plugins are a real advantage when creating a simple and functional website.

Wordpress, for example, offers hundreds of templates that can be customized. In addition, web layouts allow us to design the site by simply dragging the elements we want to add.

It has many plugins that allow you to make the page faster and improve its performance in many ways.

3. Hire a designer or design the website yourself

At this point, you have two options: you can either design the site yourself or ask for the help of a web designer. If you see yourself capable and you don't want something very complicated in terms of design, you can do it yourself.

But if you want something more complex, you will probably need to seek the help of a web designer. A designer will be able to create a more complete page with a more attractive design considering the UX and UI of the site.

Also, web designers are usually more familiar with these CMS, especially Wordpress. If you want less complications and have it ready in the shortest time, this is your best alternative.

4. Find inspiration for your website’s design

Once you know how you're going to create your website, it's time to figure out what your website's design will look like.

What all web designers do is look for references. Knowing what other designers are doing at the moment will allow us to have a guide. This way we will be able to make more attractive, modern and updated pages with the latest trends.

Here are some websites that you can use as a reference:

awwwards. One of the best sites to look for web design references. Use the filters to find the websites you want.
Behance. A social network that designers use to publish their designs. Widely used by web designers to find references.
Dribbble. Dribbble is very similar to Behance. It also offers good designs.

If you want to skip this process and you prefer to buy a template for your website, we recommend Envato and TemplateMonster.

5. Create a basic structure for your website

The next step is creating the structure of this website. When we talk about structure, we mean the way you are going to segment your site.

Some websites consist of a single page, also known as landing pages. However, a multi-page website is ideal if you want to display more content.

Typically, websites consist of four main parts:

Home page: this is the landing page of every site. Here you will find the most important information of your site. And it's the hook to attract users to everything you offer.

About us page: on this page we describe everything about us as professionals or as company. We can talk about our background, experience and values. We also usually include the vision and mission of the company.

Contact page: essential for users to contact us. It usually includes a form requesting information from the user. An email, telephone number or address is also included.

Products or services page: if you have an online store, on this page you will offer the entire product catalog. It is important to note that each product should have its own page with a description. If you offer a service instead of products, then you should create a service page.

The pages we will include depend on the purpose of our website and the way we want to engage our customers.

Your web pages should be designed strategically. This way, you will be able to guide the user towards the objective you want to achieve: make a sale, get a subscriber...

The user experience or UX is another factor that you must keep in mind when building the structure of the page. Remember that each page must have harmony in terms of design.

6. Choose the name of the domain and purchase a hosting plan.

Once you have all the design and structure of the website, it will be time to make the website itself.

There are two terms that are important when creating a website: domain and hosting.

The domain: it's the name of the web site or the address with which the users will find you. For example, our domain name is thepowermba.com.
The hosting: the hosting is the place where all the files of your web site are stored.

There are companies that offer hosting plans that include one or several domains. You can also buy the domain and the hosting from different companies.

As a tip, it's preferable to choose annual plans when hiring a hosting service, since they usually have a better price. And this way you don't have to worry about paying for hosting for a long time.

7. Customize your website

The determining factor here is the design of your website. The design is key to capture the user's attention.

Nobody feels comfortable on a poorly designed site. On the contrary, a well-designed site makes the user feel attracted and want to interact with the page.

If you are about to design your website, you should consider the following factors:

Colors: colors are the first thing the user sees when entering your website. Ideally, there should be a primary color that predominates, a secondary color to complete the previous one and a third color that makes a good contrast with the previous ones.

Fonts: there are different types of fonts. Serif for serious and elegant brands and sans serif to show innovation and clarity.

Menus: the menu is also fundamental because it allows navigation through your website. Structure this menu well so that your users know how to navigate your site with ease.

Buttons: buttons are calls to action. Buttons attract users' attention. Use buttons for those actions you want the user to do on your website.

Visual elements: visual elements are a complement that reaffirms the identity of the page. Images, shapes, animations, videos and others.

Ideally, the design of your website should be in line with the visual identity of your brand. If your brand conveys innovation, the design should do the same. If you make the most of it, your website will be effective in building customer loyalty.

8. Set up the tools you will need for your website

We've already talked about Wordpress plugins and themes. But it's necessary to delve a little deeper into the subject.

Using themes and plugins will allow us to create our website faster and get functionalities that are useful for our project.

Some themes, for example, bring specialized functionalities. Themes for online stores already have pre-designed pages for products, product details, best sellers and discounted products.

So we can work on these templates to make our life easier.

The same goes for plugins. There are thousands of plugins with different functionalities. Some improve the speed of the page, others reduce the weight of the images, others optimize the loading of the page files...

The most important plugins are those that help us in SEO optimization and those that are useful for our business. For an online store, plugins that allow users to introduce new payment methods will be useful.

9. Create the content for your website

Both written and visual content are fundamental in a website: text, images, graphics and videos. But text is one of the most effective because it's the most powerful tool to inform and persuade users.

Content marketing is also important at this point, because organic traffic depends almost entirely on the content of your page.

So the best thing to do is make relevant and regular content for the users.

10. Optimize the SEO of your website

Your website has to be well optimized to rank in search engines.

If your website is not in the first search results, it does not exist for users.

It's as simple as that. If you want to be known and sell, you have to increase traffic to your website. And you can only do this when your site is well optimized in SEO.

On page SEO should be your main focus. To optimize your on page SEO well you have to take into account the following:

Proper use of keywords of your business or profession.
Content hierarchy.
Loading speed and proper use of HTML tags.
Alternative text in the images.

You can teach yourself how to do the SEO of your page in a basic way. In fact, there are several plugins that will help you with this.

If you don't want to do it yourself or you are looking for something more professional, ideally you should contact a SEO. .

11. Design the mobile version of your website

It's more than verified that the majority of users mainly use their mobile devices to do their searches.

This means that a large number of users will get to know your website on its mobile version.

Your website must have a responsive design that adapts to mobile devices and works well. Google considers this as a key point for SEO.

12. Revise and publish your website

Once you’ve reviewed your website well, it's time to publish it. You just have to register it and publish all the pages you have already designed.

13. Monitor your website regularly

There are always bugs or something to improve. Sometimes, your site may stop loading because of a hosting problem or it may stop working because a plugin needs to be updated.

The best thing to do is to monitor it regularly to make sure everything is fine.

And these are all the steps you need to follow to create your site. It is true that there are several steps. But with a little patience and perseverance you can do it.

If you have the time and the skills, create the web page by yourself. Otherwise, the best thing to do is hiring a professional to guarantee excellent results.