Designing a website for the first time? This is what you need to know!

Designing a website for the first time can be very tricky but it can also be exciting when you know where to start. If you know a few basic elements, then you’re good to start.

First things first

With so many platforms out there, designing a website has become pretty simple. Regardless of the platform, a website needs to have two main things:

A domain name
A hosting service

This could either be free or you can also subscribe to a paid external service. Do keep in mind that for external services, it will cost you some charges and is usually done in a subscription model, paid every month.

Once you’re done with the domain name and hosting, start thinking about designing!

Design your website

You have three main options when creating a website for the first time:

Use an online web-development platform like WordPress, Weebly, LiveJournal and many more.
Outsource programmers (you can hire fun/serious 😜 ).
Designing and programming the website yourself.

Understanding the basics of web design

Online platforms like WordPress can help you with website designing and help make things easier.

However, you need to understand the basics of website designing as a beginner whichever platform you choose. You need to understand how a website works and what the visual elements of a website will be. Let’s start with the layout of the website:

You need to be clear about:

The type of website you’re requiring (blog, e-commerce website, informative, etc.)
The type of content you will be adding to your website
Whether the website will be static or dynamic
How you will balance all the elements on your website

Use copyright-free images for your website

You may need images especially for blog posts or for creating original designs. If you are using images from the internet, you need to understand the Creative Commons License. All images under this license can be used freely. Or ensure to use licensed images if you have the right to do so. You can purchase these from many websites.

Basic elements of designing a website

No website can be created without proper planning and execution. If you focus on these three elements, your website will be good to start:

Alignment in layout

All the sections need to be aligned properly, for instance, you can design a box for the body text. This box should be the same size across all the web pages and it should be aligned with the headings of the web pages as well.

Legible fonts

You need to think about the fonts on your website. What are the fonts going to be? For the body text, it is always suggested to have a common font like Times New Roman or arial to make it readable. Also, think of the colour of your website, this needs to be aligned to the brand identity of your website. If your website is for a brand, what is the brand about?

Content should be optimised for SEO

Search engine ranking is important. You need to use relevant keywords for a good position on Google. This means the written content and meta content needs to have an accurate description. To make the process easier, never skip a step. First, understand your purpose for creating the website. Then proceed with the domain and hosting. Create a checklist of items when you start designing your website. This should include the layout and the overall theme, the type of fonts, the content type and everything you intend to publish onto your website.

One final thought…

Remember that good User Interface (UI) designing also contributes to good user experience (UX)!