Creating a website is not an easy task. People are even willing to spend a lot of money to hire a person or small company to create a website for them.
Is it really expensive? How much does it cost to build a website?
The answer depends. Generally, you can create a website for as little as $ 100 to $ 500. This price does not include maintenance and maintenance fees which are usually around $ 100 to $ 200 per year depending on the service you choose.
However, the things mentioned above do not include the designs of your website. $100 to $500 can generally only get you a hosting service and a domain name for your website.
For design, you must be ready to pour more funds ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to get professional website designs. Is it too expensive? Maybe. But if you know how much process it takes to design a website, then the numbers above will start to make sense.
Fortunately, with the internet, people, including you, can now find the basics about creating and designing a website. You can find tips and tricks for building a website easily.
Some designers even share their basic ideas, principles, or design manifestos that you can apply to design a website that looks amazing. The results may not be as good as professional ones, but at least you can design your website well.
Let's take a further look at what you should pay attention to when you design websites to be able to produce good designs.
How to Design a Website
Apart from good applications or software, you need basic knowledge of anything that can make a good website design. The following are things that you can use as a guide for designing websites:
1. Great Layout
The first principle of designing a website is a clear information structure.
Whether you use your website to sell products, as a company profile, or as a customer support center for your business, you provide information through your website.
This information will then have a big influence on customer decisions, whether they decide to buy your product, find out more about your company, and so on.
This is what makes clear information structure important because if your web page design is not good, then there is a chance that you will lose customers.
What is a good information structure?
Generally, a website, whatever its purpose, starts with a title page that shows the company name, logo, slogan, and anything else that grabs your attention quickly.
The title page is then followed by a page about us and detailed information about the company, products, and contacts followed until the end.
Of course, a good information structure does not always follow this. You can take a look at the websites of other companies in your industry and see how they structure the information on their websites.
2. Great Navigation
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Apart from a good information structure, you also need a good navigation system when you design websites.
Why do you need good navigation?
Because people tend to want to jump right into the parts they are looking for. But, of course, when they get the information they are looking for, for example, the features of your product, they also need other information, such as your contact and business address, to follow up their interest in your product.
Of course, not all visitors to your site behave that way. It is possible that your website will be visited by really structured and conscientious people when they read the information on your website.
They will likely go back and forth from one part to another to make sure the information they receive is correct. Good navigation on a web page design will help them to browse the information better.
So how do you make good navigation?
Good navigation can only be born from a good information structure. You just have to make sure that the order of information you display in the navigation menu is already in order and the buttons, if you use them, have a size and color that is not too flashy.
3. Color Schemes
When it comes to design, we can't help but talk about color. Everyone has their own opinion about color; what colors do you like, what colors complement each other, and so on.
When designing a website, you cannot determine the color according to your wishes. You have to choose a color that can build the brand of your business.
This may seem quite difficult, especially when you have little or no design experience. However, you can learn slowly by looking at websites that are similar to yours and reading guides on choosing colors on the internet.
4. Fonts
At first, you might think, what is the importance of fonts? Don't you just have to choose whatever people can read easily?
Even if you are correct in prioritizing readability, you still have to consider other things.
First, you have to consider the content of your content. Will your website be full of content? For example, suppose you want to create a blog, or your website is a news website. If so, then it's a good idea to choose a font that isn't too illustrative, like sans-serif.
Then, you also have to consider your business brand. Each font has its own impression and identity. For example, Times New Roman has a professional feel and is often used on media or journalism websites. Make sure you choose the appropriate font for your website.
How many types of fonts can you use? Ideally, you only need three types. You don't have to follow these rules, but make sure you have a strong reason to add fonts to your website.
Fonts may sound insignificant when you design websites, but if you're not careful, you'll end up with a messy web page design.
5. Make Sure Images Are Relevant
When designing a website, inserting and placing images is one of the most enjoyable parts. You are slowly starting to see how your website starts to take shape with some of the content that you have planned in advance.
But, don't let the fun keep you from sorting out the images that you use on your website. Using images that are irrelevant or have poor resolution is one of the biggest mistakes when you design your website.
The first mistake came from using generic photographs. Photographs of people who aren't even part of your company shaking hands, smiling, and looking confident are some examples of generic photos that are often used.
Avoid generic images of people whenever possible. If you want to use images of people make sure you use photos of people from your company and adjust the context of the photography and usage accordingly.
The second mistake comes from using photos that are completely irrelevant. You may be using a photo because it looks too good not to use on your website.
However, the main thing when designing websites is that you can't do something just because you want to. You should always have a good reason when making artistic choices when you design websites.
6. Call-To-Actions Buttons (CTAs)
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
One of the elements that can determine whether someone wants to buy your product or find out more about your company is a strong Call-To-Action (CTA).
When designing a website, you might think that you can simply create a button and write "start now" or "order now" on it to create a strong CTA.
But, like any other design element, CTAs have their own complexities.
First of all, you have to make sure of the size of your CTA button. If it's too big and your CTA button will distract visitors who are reading, and if it's too small and your readers won't see it and may hesitate to give it a try.
Apart from that, you also need to make sure your CTA button stands out from the rest of the elements in terms of color. But, don't let your CTA button color be too flashy which can ruin the color composition on your website.
Lastly, you need to position your CTA button in a good place. Give room for your CTA button to breathe and reveal itself.
7. Optimize Your Website
The last principle that you should pay attention to when you are designing a website is the performance of your website.
The first performance you should pay attention to is how fast your website can be opened by visitors. If your website is taking a long time to open, it's possible that visitors will switch to another website.
You have to make sure that you don't use too many images or videos that can make your website take too long to open. You will need all the images and videos on your website, but you have to make sure they also don't make your website too heavy.
The second performance is that you have to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. This is important because more and more people are doing mobile searches. If the appearance of your mobile website is messy, then there is a high chance that you will lose customers.
How to Design Websites With Strikingly
Strikingly is a website builder that you can use to easily design websites. At Strikingly, you can find ready-made templates that you can use to start building your website.
You can use some of the features from Strikingly to make it easier for you to design websites.
The first feature is a large selection of fonts. You can access hundreds of fonts from Strikingly for you to use on your website. You can also upload fonts that you download from outside to your website.
Image taken from Strikingly product
Then, you can also use the color schemes feature from Strikingly. You can choose various types of colors to help you design websites easily. With this feature, you can be sure to get a nice and consistent color scheme on your website.
You can also edit the images you want to use directly on your website. Strikingly’s image editor feature can help you to produce amazing images with simple steps.
Image taken from Strikingly product
Finally, you can also find it easy to organize content on your website by using Strikingly's drag and drop feature. This feature makes it very easy for you to move and organize your content using just the mouse. With this feature, you can quickly experiment when you are designing a website.
Those are the principles or design manifesto that you can use as a guide to design websites.
Designing a website can be challenging and difficult. But, if you know what things you need to pay attention to design your websites well, then you can learn to do it yourself.
Strikingly is a website builder that is suitable for those of you who want to easily design websites. Strikingly has an intuitive interface and features that can help you design a website.
Are you ready to design your websites on your own? Sign up with Strikingly now!
