WEB DESIGNERS BROMLEY KENT
With the economy taking a turn for the worst, more and more people are now looking to earn extra income by turning their hand to running their own business from home either on a part-time basis or many now going full-time.
Aside from the obvious things like what is the right business for you, private or a limited company and a business plan, you need a business front and you need clients.
An engaging and informative website is essential for any business operating today.
Designing a website may seem like an overwhelming project, but there are many tools available that can make creating your own site easy, even for beginners with no coding or design experience.
To help you get your new site up and running in no time, here is a quick guide on how to design a basic, but decent website. It covers the basic steps and highlights some important considerations to keep in mind.
Before you design your website, there are a few things you’ll need to consider. What you need it for, what you need it to do and do you have the knowledge, skill set and time to do it?
This is where a professional web designer in Bromley like Pozitive Media can step in and take over all the hard part for you. Design, build, hosting and lead generation.
If you do decide to build it yourself, generally, you’ll need the website builder itself, a domain registrar and a web hosting platform (if you’ve chosen a website builder that doesn’t include hosting in its package). You’ll also need an SSL certificate to secure the site, a point-of-sale (POS) system for payments and a search engine optimisation (SEO) tool to ensure that people find you on search engines.
Here what you need to design, build and maintain your website:
Web Hosting: Your website content requires physical space, and that is what web hosting platforms do—they store your texts, images and databases so that you can access them on the web.
Domain Name: Your domain name is the address visitors see in their browser bar when they search for you. To avoid confusion, incorporate your name and if it’s not available, choose something close to it. You can register your domain name with a domain registrar. Some hosting service providers also serve as domain registrars, so find out before purchasing.
SSL Certificate: For your business’s security and reputation, and the safety of user information, obtain a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate from an SSL certificate service provider.
Web Builder: Sign up on a website builder to create your website without coding experience. There are templates with features you can customise to design your choice website.
Search Engine Optimisation Tool: From the start, use an SEO tool to create an SEO strategy so that your content follows basic SEO practices and techniques and starts achieving your desired results. You need to be ranked in any search engine in order for people to find you.
Point of Sale: If you’re offering services or selling products that require processing and accepting payments, you’ll need to incorporate a POS service into your website.
How To Design a Web Site
While you can customise your website to fit your unique needs or suit your style, there are specific actions that anyone who wants to design a website must take. Follow carefully to find out how to design a website, from defining your website’s purpose to choosing a website designing platform, designing the architecture, filling in necessary content and launching your website.
1. Define the Site’s Purpose
To design a website that yields expected results, you’ll need to define what you want from it and want it to do. Consider why you’re designing the website who your audience is, and what you’re targeting. Are you trying to get downloads, sales, reservations, appointments booked, engagements or even a larger audience?
It’s crucial you know the purpose of the intended website. Knowing it will help you adopt the right content strategy and guide you through choosing the right platform, theme and page architecture.
2. Choose Your Platform
Once you note why you’re building a website, you can check out website builders. These do-it-yourself (DIY) tools will help you to make a website yourself, even when you don’t know any line of code. And there are those designed for specific purposes, such as e-commerce, blogs and portfolios.
Website builders include customisable templates for adding your texts and images, and many take care of domain registration and hosting too. But you’ll need to use the drag-and-drop interface to design each website page yourself. So, choose one that suits the purpose of your site and your level of skill.
3. Gather Your Brand Elements
Elements are details such as colours, fonts and images that bring your website together. So, in designing your site, consider your brand’s identity.
Start with the colour scheme, working with a primary colour and one or two complementary colours. Then, choose a text style that aligns with your brand. For example, serif symbolizes formality and authority, sans serif, modernism and script, creativity. Do not choose funky odd text styles just because “you think” they look great, as some older PCs and machines cannot understand them and they may look terrible on the users PC or laptop.
Also, add images to capture the users’ attention, but make sure they are relevant and of high quality so they can make the right impression on users.
4. Select a Template or Theme
Next, choose a theme or template, which is the layout of your site the way images, text and buttons appear on your site. Themes are pre-designed layouts to help you design your site, even as a beginner.
Most platforms come with a range of templates divided into categories, and each category has built-in features relevant to a specific industry. So, preview them to choose one that’s most relevant to your site.
Note that if you choose to build your website with WordPress, you will need to get web hosting from a third-party hosting provider and install WordPress. With that, you will be able to access your WordPress admin dashboard, install a theme and import demo content for premium themes.
5. Map Out Your Site
To make designing easier, visualise the pages that will appear on your site and how they will link to each other. For example, knowing how many pages will be on your website, their content and the general layout means that you’ll have a guide to work with when you start designing each part. Most sites today have a home page (the first one people see) plus other detailed explanatory pages for products, services, Terms, Privacy policy etc. Think it all through first.
6. Design Each Site Element
With your template or theme and website map, the next step is to begin designing each site element, such as your menu (or site navigation), header and footer, search bar, and any additional elements you want. site to have. Using elements such as the following will structure your website, making it easy to navigate.
Menu: This element displays the items featured on your website. Make sure it is accessible on every page, and displays only a few items you don’t want to cluster visitors’ screens.
Header and Footer: These elements enhance user engagement. The header should include features such as the navigation menu and your logo, which you want visitors to find quickly. A footer should offer more information, such as contact information and terms of service.
Search Bar: Use a magnifying glass or a box, but place it at a prominent part of every page. The top-left or top-right corner is often the best.
7. Customise Your Web Pages
Your content depends on your site’s purpose, so you can tweak it to suit you. However, every website should have the following web pages.
Home Page: Every visitor lands here, so it’s a good place to summarise your website. Include your logo, business name, what readers should expect from you and a navigation menu that makes browsing your site easy. Make sure this page is organised and eye-catching.
Product or Service Page: This page should tell visitors what you’re offering them and allow them to make a purchase. For an e-commerce site, create a page for catalog display and another to show each item in detail.
About Page: This page should introduce you to visitors, tell your story, communicate your values and highlight what makes you different from other brands.
Blog Page: If you intend to use blogging as a content marketing strategy, then you have to create this page, which will display snippets of published blog posts. Users can then click on one that interests them.
Contact Page: Let website visitors know how they can reach you. It can be via phone calls, emails or social media platforms. Also, you can include your physical address, a live-chat widget and a contact form. It all takes time and planning.
Other pages you can add:
Custom 404 Page: When visitors go to a page that doesn’t exist on your website, you should direct them to a page displaying “404 Error.” You can further customise yours to include your logo, a link to your home page or a lighthearted message “Congrats! You found our error page!”
FAQ Page: This page is dedicated to answering common questions that may be on the minds of visitors. That way, website visitors won’t need to reach out to you for a simple question like “is X included in the purchase”.
Testimonials: Here’s your opportunity to blow your trumpet. Include reviews from previous clients testifying to how you’ve helped them. Also, display trusted brands that have given you awards or written about you.
8. Test and Launch Your Website
Before your site goes live, test loading time, content readability, linking and mobile responsiveness, contact form and any other element that can affect user experience.
Have family members and colleagues give their feedback about your website’s design.
If there are no issues, go ahead and publish your site.
Also, keep updating your website based on its performance, trends and current business operations.
9. Optimise Your Content. This is very important and one most people ignore.
After designing and launching your website, you should plan to optimise your site for a smooth user experience. Here’s what you can do.
Mobile Responsiveness: Most website templates are now mobile responsive your content reformats to fit different screen sizes. However, to be on the safe side, consider activating a mobile app. You can test your website on browsers such as Safari or even Google Chrome on iPhones and Android phones.
Internet Linking: Internal links allow users and search engine tools to see you as an authority in your industry. They also keep people on your site, so use hyperlinks to direct users to other relevant web pages.
Media Optimisation: To prevent low ranking, higher bounce rates, lower click-throughs and longer load times, work on your media files. Make sure they are not too large and that you don’t have too many photos or videos on each page. Also, feature only relevant images and videos.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): SEO involves tweaking content such as images and texts to increase the number of people on your website. Examples of such optimisation actions are adding alt texts to images and using readable URLs.
Best Tools To Design a Website
To source for and customise texts, shapes, colors and images needed for designing the sections and pages of your website, you’ll need certain apps and tools. With these tools, you can make the best designs without having to start from scratch.
Website Builders: You’ll need a website builder with the features required to design the website you like.
Design Tools: A design tool is good for graphic design and photo editing. Some marketplaces host several expert website designers in Bromley who can help you with design tasks.
Logo Makers: This tool is necessary if you’re yet to design your business logo and want to do that alongside your website designing process.
Photo Apps: Use photo apps such as Stockphoto dot com to find visually appealing images to go with your texts.
Designing can be tricky, but thanks to modern website builders with customisable templates and elements, it’s pretty straightforward to design your own website.
However, deciding whether to hire a professional website designer or design one yourself depends on your budget, skill, time and website requirements.
If you have the money to pay an expert, you can hire an expert web designer in Bromley Kent , especially if the intended site is complex or you don’t have time to design. But you should utilise website builders if you enjoy building and would rather avoid the back and forth involved in working with another person, then you should utilise website builders.
For a free no obligation chat on how we can help you design your perfect business website AND get you local clients contact Pozitive Media today on 0800 292 2921 or go to our website at www.pozitivemedia.com
Web Designers Bromley Kent
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