Steps to Designing Custom Websites for Businesses

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Lydia Chamberlain
March 17, 2020

Starting to design a website on your own can seem intimidating. But the truth is you just need to keep a few pointers in mind while designing one. Web design is a very important factor in determining your overall online digital success. In fact 39% people will simply abandon a website in case they feel that the layout is unappealing. Custom website design is a lot like selling a vehicle. A car might comprise of a fantastic engine but people will never buy it if the chassis is unattractive. In this content, you can browse through an easy to follow guide for developing a business that enjoys victorious online presence.

Goal identification

While articulating the website design process steps, you must specify the designer the end objective of your website design. Questions that you must discover & answer in the initial stage of the website designing process incorporates:

Who is the website for?

What will the audience expect to discover?

To inform, to amuse or to sell, what is the website’s objective?

Is the website a portion of a broader branding tactic with its exclusive focus or does it need to specifically express the core message of a brand?

The entire project can move in the incorrect direction if these questions do not receive clear answers. However, designers while contemplating with Custom website design can write one or two noticeably identified objectives to put all the designs on the correct path. Apprehending the target audience of the wordpress development company and knowing important facts about the competition is also very important.

Tools for the successful completion of the goal identification step are:

Creative Brief

Brand Attributes

Audience Personas

Competitor analysis

Scope definition

Amidst many, scope definition is one of the ecommerce website design steps that must be emphasized. Designers encounter various challenges as they start working on this particular step. For instance, the client will always begin with one objective in mind but the goal will soon enlarge and progress and transform during the entire designing procedure. The designer will soon find himself not only designing the website but web applications, push notifications & emails.

This for designers is truly beneficial as it will result in more work but he/she must carry adequate experience for handling that amount of work. Also, the client’s enhanced expectations must be matched with an enhancement in timeline and budget or else the project will seem to be unrealistic.

Designers & clients can both utilize Gantt chart that will include a practical timeline for the particular project, major landmarks, setting boundaries & achieving deadlines.

Tools for Scope Definition

Gantt Chart Or Various Other Timeline Visualization Tools

A Contract

Wireframe creation & sitemap

Of all the steps to design website, the foundation of any well-built Custom website design lies in the sitemap. Designers can gain a crystal clear notion of the site’s information architecture & clarify the link between the numerous content elements & pages. When you try to build a website without the presence of a sitemap, you can compare that to structuring a house but without the blueprint and the outcome most of the time is not satisfactory.

The subsequent step is to discover the inspiration for the designs & develop a mockup of wireframe. Wireframes render a framework for the website’s content & visual design elements storage and help designers in recognizing potential gaps & challenges with the help of the sitemap.

Tools for wireframing & sitemapping

Slickplan

Paper & Pencil

Mindnode

Moqups

Axure

Writemaps

Balsamiq

Sketch

Webflow

Content creation

After setting a robust framework of the website, designers can move to the next web design process for clients. Witten content is the most vital aspect of any website.

It serves two very important necessary purposes:

Driving action & engagement

Irrespective of how gorgeous & eye-catching the Custom website design of your website is, high-quality content is necessary for engaging readers. Only then, they will take action to meet the website’s objectives. This will pose an effect by both how the content is presented like the structural elements & the written content itself.

Lengthy & dull contents can never arrest the visitors’ attention for too long but it can definitely grab their attention with intriguing & short contents. In case the pages of your website require a plethora of contents, correctly “chunking” the content by contravening it in short paragraphs & supplementing it with visuals can assist in keeping an engaging feel.

SEO

Boosting a website’s visibility for SERPs, the content of your website must include the correct key-phrases & keywords. There are tools from which you can discover potential phrases & keywords for understanding what individuals are actually searching on Google. Search engine algorithms are tricky that needs to be matched with clever content strategies.

Keyword-rich & well-written content is easily noticeable in front of the search engines and this also helps in making the website easier to discover.

Tools

Tools

Quip

Webflow CMS

Google Docs

Gather Content

Dropbox Paper

Google Trends

Google Keyword Planner

Visual elements

While going through the website design process checklist, make sure this step is not overlooked as here you can really put your designer’s skill into use. This portion of the entire designing procedure is shaped by present branding elements, logos & preferred colors as specified by client.

Superior quality images will offer your website a highly professional feel & look and also images help in building trust & communicating messages. Visual content will always result in more clicks, engagement & revenue. But going beyond that, users & visitors do find images very appealing on websites. Images make website pages look less cumbersome & can express vital messages & will also not need people to actually read it.

Getting hands on the correct size of images is possible with a professional photographer. Massive images can slow down websites for which you need to use tools for compressing images but without compromising the quality. Images need to be responsive just like your website as well so that users do not face difficulty in browsing in all devices.

Visual designs are the perfect way of communicating with the website’s users. If done correctly you can expect sheer success for your website but you will be simply a web address if you do not get it right.

Tools

Visual Style Guides

Sketch, Photoshop

Element collages, Moodboards

Testing

When you avail custom web design services from a reputed company, you will find the designers placing special focus on this step. They will test every page for ensuring that all links are functional and also if the website is loading correctly on every browser & device. There will be minute coding mistakes that will lead to errors. But it is always recommended to test the bugs and fix it during the testing process than to present broken websites to the users.

Tools

SEO Spider

W3C Link Checker

Launch

This is the final Custom website design step. But expecting it to function perfectly right after launching will only disappoint you. You will still find elements that will require fixing. Website designing is an ongoing procedure that will always require continuous maintenance. Website designing is about discovering the correct balance between function & form. Using correct colors, design motifs and font is very important. You need to hire skilled designers who are very much familiar in this particular concept so that they are able to deliver a website that walks the fragile tightrope in between the two.

Final Say

As you follow this 7-step outline as mentioned above, you can expect your custom web design process to take on a smooth course. With beforehand research & planning, you can get hands on a more informed website design. By thoroughly following a proper checklist for advancement & launch, there will be no chance that you will miss out on crucial steps. You can easily guard the investment you put in for building your website by maintaining the website regularly. Connect with us today for availing custom web designing services for quickly launching your dream website today.

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