Introduction
If you are planning to create a new website for your business or for any other reason, you should definitely consider the following things before starting the development. If you already have a website, then you should consider redesigning your website so that it has the following things in it.
There are millions of websites out there. How would you stand out from them? Follow the steps in this article when creating your website and you will be able to stand out from the crowd.
This article is focused mainly on those who are web designers are developers who are planning to design their website from scratch. If you are using any kind of theme in your web design, then you may have to look for the following things in the theme.
So, without much introduction let’s get right into it.
10 Things to consider before creating your website
The Purpose
The first thing to consider is the purpose of your website. There should be a reason why you are creating a website. And you should be clear about the purpose of your website. You should have an idea of who your audience should be. Once you understand that you might be able to design the website accordingly.
If your website mainly focuses on art, then you should make your website with a different color scheme than if your website is focused on the latest news articles. If you are creating a website for kids, you should use a completely different kind of UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) which will not work for a website for Computer Science education.
So, before starting the design of your website, try to have a firm idea about the purpose of your website.
Responsive
Smartphone usage has skyrocketed for the past few years and most of your visitors might be mobile phone users. There are many different screen sizes to consider when creating a website today. There are so many smart devices: smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, computers and more.
Your website should be able to serve all these different types of visitors with just your one website. If you just design and upload your website. It won’t necessarily be a soothing user experience for all the visitors.
For a smartphone user, you should deliver a completely different design. For a desktop user, you should have a different design. The ultimate goal is to make the visitor’s experience soothing.
If you want to learn about responsive web design you can watch this video.
Clean Design
One of the major mistakes that a new web designer does is that he/she tries to implement everything he/she has learned to the website regardless of what the website actually needs to have.
You don’t always need to have a carousel. You don’t always need to have too many images. Sometimes it is even useless to have fancy, complicated navigation menus.
A clean design works almost every time. Don’t overwhelm the visitors with so many things to focus on. Instead, guide your visitor to navigate through your website with a clean and simple design.
Logo
A logo adds more credibility to your website. You should definitely consider creating a logo for your brand/website. If you are not into graphics designing, hire a logo designer and creating a suitable logo for your brand. It will make your website look more professional.
Color Scheme
Different colors mean different emotions. You need to make sure you are choosing the right color scheme for your website.
There are many online tools that can help you choose a good color scheme. One of them is called Coolors where it gives you a random set of colors. You can just press Space Bar on your keyboard and it will keep generating a random set of colors. Once you find your combination, you can use that. If you like one of the colors, you can lock it and generate other colors based on your selected color.
Another cool resource for great color schemes is flatuicolors.
Fewer Fonts
Don’t add too many fonts to your website. Just stick with one or two fonts. Also, try to find matching fonts. You can use Google Fonts to get free fonts. It also helps you find matching fonts for heading and paragraphs. Even fonts tell a lot about your website.
If you want to learn more about Google Fonts, you can watch this video.
Images
Try to use images on your website wherever needed. People get bored by just reading some text. Try to add some illustrations or images about the topic of your post.
You can buy stock photos or even find free images for use from many websites like Pixabay, Unsplash, Pexels, etc.
Minimize Popups
Have you ever got annoyed of popups on any website? I have many times. The same will your visitors feel if you add too many popups on your website. Try to avoid popups whenever possible.
You don’t want your visitors to run away from your website. You have to give them an awesome user experience.
Easy Navigation
Sometimes when you visit a website, you may feel lost and may not know where to go next. It is always a good idea to guide the visitor to the next link he/she needs to go.
Design easy navigation. Whenever you write posts, add links to it to where the visitor should go next. Add links to your blogs, contact form, about page, privacy policy and all the important pages where the visitor can easily notice them.
Loading Time
One of the major reasons why many visitors abandon a website is its slow loading time. You should all you can to decrease the load time of your website.
One of the main reasons for slow loading time is that you may not be using optimized images or maybe you are scaling down your image instead of creating a different copy of the scaled image.
There is an awesome website called GTmetrix which can help you analyze the load time of your website. It also gives you reasons why your website is slow and also tips on how to improve. You should absolutely use it.
Social Media Integration
Social media is crucial when it comes to the online presence of your business. Along with creating your website you should create at least a Facebook, Instagram and Twitter account for your brand.
Integrate them in your website and even add options to share using different social media networks. This gives the visitor another reason for sharing your website with others.
SSL
Being online is not always secure. Whenever a visitor visits your website, it is important for you to make them feel that they are safe. You should absolutely add an SSL certificate to your website where it shows https instead of HTTP.
SSL is required especially for those websites which have online transactions.
There are even services that give you free SSL. It is crucial if you create a website now.
Browser Compatibility
One of the major problems web developers and designers face is that different browsers interpret your website differently. This can really be a pain. But, you have to make sure that your website is working as intended in at least all the major browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, etc.
All Required Pages
Then the last thing I want to add is that you should have all the required pages that every website typically has. They are the About Us page where you have to give an introduction about yourself or your business. You need to have a Privacy Policy page. You also need to have a Contact Form where the visitor can give their feedback.
Conclusion
I hope that you will have a great time developing your website using the above-mentioned points. If you have something else to mention that is essential for creating a website, please mention it in the comments below. Thanks a lot for reading.