Branding
Working on your branding elements is probably the most fun part of the whole website design process!
We all love choosing a name, designing a logo with different color options, fonts and above all! It doesn’t feel good to see some logos in the morning, even though I’m going too far …
Okay, let’s sort things out:
Go first with the name and domain
Your domain name determines everything else.
You don’t want to end up with a domain name that is significantly different from your product or business name.
You don’t want to be forced to take a weird TLD (domain extension) to be able to use your business name.
You don’t want to get a domain name that’s easy to confuse. For example, Rosas.cafe vs rosascafe.com.
Both exist on existing websites and yes, both lead to different cafes.
Start by listing all the names that come to your mind and create seeds for your domain search. Learn more website design step
While on the subject, don’t forget that you can now take advantage of modern TLDs such as .blog, .city, .art, .design, .store, but they fit the purpose of your site.
When you see a domain you like, register it immediately. Also, nowadays, it is not so important to keep every possible TLD version of your domain, so you no longer have to get SITE.net, SITE.org, etc.
Determine your brand identity
It’s about your brand’s colors, fonts and everything related.
If you are confident with these things and call some people “visual muscles” then you can work on brand identity yourself. If not here’s a new product just for you!
The last product here is (at least) a color scheme that you are going to use on the site. Now the color scheme and your brand identity will make all the work on the site more straightforward.
Get a logo
Nowadays, designing professional logos is really easy even with an online tool.
If you want to do any professional work on your logo, go to 99 Design, Logo Contest or Freelancer.
If you want to work with some online tools from yourself, try Luka or Hatchful.
Step : Copy the website
Most people leave a copy of their website at the end. This is not a good idea.
If you don’t create written content for your pages at an early stage, you’re making more web design steps more difficult.
Without clearly defined content it will become more difficult to structure the design and make sure things fit. This way you end up with a design that looks great but isn’t quite effective.
Create content for the pages you must have
See what the competition is doing and try to emulate a quantity.
Try to think about how you are going to structure the pages and how you are leaving special things.
Not sure how to get started? Take a look at our starter catalog and draw inspiration from there. Browse through your favorite designs and pages and think of any content you can put there.
When you do this, keep in mind your main website goals and sub-goals for each individual page.
Think about your homepage
This is easily the most popular page and it is the one that gives you the most benefit in directing your visitors to the site.
List the elements you want to feature on the homepage and think about the places you want them to display.
Again, you can inspire yourself with starter templates and other sites like your competition and your choice. All these notes you took here come into play here!
Use placeholder content
You don’t need to be 100% ready for every piece of your final form right now. Some things can be met later and you don’t have to hold on to this stage.
You can use placeholders for things like:
Individual product descriptions if they are unimportant to the site structure
Your checkout pages and other e-commerce related pages
Blog posts
Contact information
Menu
Social media links
“Lorem ipsum”works pretty well here.
Step : Website structure
Your website structure is much more than what is available on a single web page. How all these pages connect to each other and how they move visitors from place to place helps them to do what they want to do.
In short, think of UX (user experience). More precisely, what do you want your visitors to be able to do on your site? You are one of them