5 Crucial Steps to Create a Sleek Website
Creating a good website is still quite a difficult issue. Since our goal is the accessibility of web technologies for everyone in the contemporary world, we’ve prepared a detailed guide that will help you to design a website for a short time and without extra expenses. We have highlighted the most important aspects and principles and presented them step by step:
1. Idea and Main Goal 💡🎯
Everything starts with idea. Similarly to websites, ideas can be slightly different. This depends on you and your imagination. Here are some most popular types of websites:
• Personal CV website for experts and professionals;
• Portfolios for painters, photographers and designers;
• Site for brands and business;
• Webpage for specific event.
As soon as you have the idea, you should understand the main goal of the website. This is required to set the priorities, comprehend which elements should be pointed out and what your visitor should see first of all when he/she opens your page. The availability of set major goals will enable us to build the appropriate structure. For instance, in case you are creating a personal webpage, it should first introduce you, your story, occupation, your personal features and views.
In case of creating web portfolio, the major focus should be surely made on your works and their descriptions that would enable your users to understand your vision that would show your personality and let your visitors get to know a bit more about your specific projects.
Also, it is important to add the option that would allow messaging you directly or through your social media accounts.
Designing website for brand or business, we are aware of the fact that it is important to enable your users to understand products and services the company provides. The web page designed should clearly show the reason for the organization’s success in its business, the history of its clients and their customer experience.
Example:
If you create a website for a beauty salon, the page should provide the option for online reservation of procedures, detailed description of their features, price policy and present the history and peculiarities of the institution.
Issue:
Clients want to use beauty services, but they frequently do not know their principals and features. Not each customer is able to book the procedure via the telephone call.
Task:
To create online booking option quickly and provide full information about the service list in an accessible way.
Idea:
You can divide all range of services into specific categories like Hairstyle, Makeup, Nails Care, Cosmetology, etc. Then, you can place them on the home page with the navigation to the section of specific category that involves all information about the procedure and its fare. Also, there can be added online booking button to the menu and banner of the home page.
2. Discover & Inspiration 🔍😻
As soon as you have identified the idea and goal for the website, it is a high time to get deep into the web bottom for inspiration. To do so, it is worth looking up existing websites and take note of things you like the most about them. First of all, we look at the accuracy of structure, the style of color combination, the quality of photos and the font choice. Pay attention to the strategy of website construction, menu items and sections, modern its tendencies in total and peculiar styles. It can be a website of the same or similar subject or the site of competitors. To get inspiration, we can recommend you viewing gallery sites that contain examples of modern web pages and trends.
3. Structure & Wireframes 📝📕
Once you have created the image of your future website, you are safe to start developing its structure. At first, you should decide the number of content and information you are going to present on your page. Highlight the main aspects and start working on them. In case you have too much information, think about how to divide it into several pages. Think about the title of these sections and their subsections.
Hint: Take a piece of paper and pen or use a text editor. Write down the list of pages to evaluate the size and the content of your menu. So, now you have the approximate structure of your website. The next step is creating the pattern or prototype of your page.
What does the prototype mean?
Prototype is a pictorial schematic representation of elements and blocks of a site for each page individually. It is made in fairly simplified form without profound element details so you can use it as a rough draft to imagine the “skeleton” of your future web page.
How to create prototype?
You can also use a piece of paper and pen to create a prototype. Use the following schematics of blocks and elements:
- Text, menu items in navigation — straight line
- Headers — direct bold line
- Pictures — rectangle with crossed lines
- Buttons and other elements — rectangular blocks
4. Content 📝🤓
At first, the site content implies its text part. You can use services of copywriter for a small fee who will conduct an interview with you, prepare the required material, or you can write the text by yourself. In order to write the text for the website by yourself, identify its content and size according to the type of your page. Put the following questions:
- Who is the reader of your text?
- What value your reader should gain from reading it?
- What your reader can find out from it?
Once you answered these questions you can start writing.
What kind of text should you write?
- First of all, make a brief overview of yourself and your occupation. Also, write more comprehensive version of your piece. Here you can present your story. Your writing should be easy to understand and reader-friendly so, write as you speak.
- Emphasize and write about some of your advantages and features, show your uniqueness and the reason for love to your product.
- If you provide specific services, write in details about their characteristics and advantages.
- Write about your team, partners or clients. Real stories foster trust between you and your visitors.
How to arrange the text?
- Keep in mind that you shouldn’t write too long texts since almost no one reads them. Visitors primarily value the uniqueness and honesty of you and your brand. So, write clearly and substantially.
- It is important to keep the structure. Texts that contain different information should be divided into separate paragraphs and use spaces between blocks with text so information could be easily perceived. Do not forget about headings. They have to attract the reader’s attention, convey the essence of the text, unfold its content and details.
- Escort the overall text with pictures if possible. Text supplemented with them is always perceived better.
You can write all texts in the text editor and replace them to the site later.
5. Design 🎨🤩
After thinking over structure and content, you can start work on design. At first, go to your Arkitekt account, if you haven’t one yet, you can create it here . The first step implies selecting theme. Choose the theme you like based on your needs. Please note that the theme can be completely changed. It is a stylized demo content directed to offer selected styles and give an idea of possible combinations.
Once you selected desired themes, you can start building your site according to previously developed prototype.
Navigation
Creating required pages, choose the type and layout of the menu. Make sure the links are written correctly, contain one or two words and they can be easily seen. Double check whether the menu doesn’t include too many sections, 5–7 items will be enough.
Branding
Add your logo to the navigation menu. The logo size shouldn’t be too large. If you do not have a logo, you can write your own website title and design it by choosing the desired font from our font library.
Banners and Photos
While selecting photos for your website, make sure they are of the proper high quality since it is critically important for the general look of your page. Do not use standard clip art images. You can design photo on your own or ask experts for help. Also, you can use illustrations as an alternative to photos. Always remember that high-quality photos & illustrations equal to the high-quality website.
You can take a closer look and use high-quality photos from the following platforms:
You can take a closer look at examples of high-quality photos and use them on your website on the following platforms:
Fonts
The proper font choice affects the overall impression of website and plays a crucial role in communication with your visitors. It is important to select the font that will fit the tone of your project. Some projects look good with more playful fonts whereas others are great with more restrained types that do not attract too much attention.
Arkitekt offers you a wide variety of fonts to help you choose the most appropriate one for your website. You are welcome to select one or maximum three types since a large number of chosen fonts may destruct the uniqueness of your site.
Therefore, choose fonts that match your character or the character of your brand that will reflect your corporate identity and use them in different sizes and scales if necessary.
Remember that using a variety of sizes and transparencies, you set the visual hierarchy on pages. Headings use is a basic tool for that. Use the one big heading (Heading 1) per page. For another text, use smaller heading (Heading 2) and other small headings (Heading 3) to complete the rest of the page. Use headings according to the priority of information. Start with the most important one and proceed with less essential one.
After choosing the appropriate font and headings, check out whether line spacing and interlocutory intervals are correct. Make sure the text is not compressed, does not split into separate letters and has enough space between lines so it is easy to read.
Colors
Choose and use branded colors for your website. Each color conveys its own message. It is safe to apply two or three basic colors one of which should dominate among others. You can use the shades of selected basic colors: darker or lighter to expand the palette. Here’s some tools for you that will help you pick beautiful color combinations:
General Style
Once you finished design, and placed all sections, view your site and make sure it looks clearly and accurately. Pay attention to headings, size between elements and the presence of “white space”. “White Space” implies an empty place around sections. It provides the required “air” to focus visitors on different aspects of pages, making the site easy to navigate and view.
It makes the contrast between congested and well-organized, spacious site. It is worth using “white space” to show which elements relate to each other. In case they are located close to each other, they are perceived as parts of one context, otherwise, they belong to another one.
Hence, when your site is ready, you can show it to the world and share it with your users. Send its link to your friends and colleagues and receive feedback. Site creation is only one of the first stages. Then, you should update it, make editions and monitor the activity of your visitors.
Empower your inner creator and make your own unique website in minutes with Arkitekt.io now. 🙌🤩
Please share this article if you like it, so we could make web a better place together!👏
