Designing your own website has never been easier with the evolution of website builders. This means you can make a website without hiring a developer.

But, how exactly can you design your own website? Well, first, you’ve got to choose the right website builder for you. As you might already know, many website builders allow you to make your website for free, such as WordPress and Wix.

In this article, we’ll guide you to designing your own website, layout your site builder’s options and web hosting. So, to delve deeper into the elements of your site, we’ve prepared this guide just for you.

Steps in Designing Your Own Website

Step#1: Remember to Set Your Goal Before Designing Your Own Website

Before designing your website, it’s vital to know what you want to accomplish. This is because there are several website types out there.

With that being said, it’s crucial to line up your site to your business. For example, if you’re selling products, an online store is the ideal website for you. 

Meanwhile, if you want to showcase your artwork, a portfolio website is the right choice. Moreover, if you want a website to manage and grow your business, a business website would be perfect for you.

Once you’ve chosen the website type you need, designing your website is next. If you need some inspiration in designing your website, you can search for trendy websites for 2021 to help you decide what kind of design you want.

Step #2: Pick Your Website Builder Before Designing Your Own Website

Once done with identifying your goal, choosing the right website builders is next. A website builder or content management system (CMS) is a type of platform where you can design, customise and publish a website.

In this platform, you don’t need coding knowledge to design your own website. However, if you want your website to be designed by professionals, you can always hire help from trusted website design companies.

But, if you want to try designing your own website, you can always opt for WordPress or Wix. These two site builders offer free website building that you can modify based on your taste and type of business.

WordPress vs. Wix

Like any other CMS or site builder, there are pros and cons to using WordPress or Wix. Thus, it’s best to identify the needs of your business to come up with the right choice.

WordPress

Choosing WordPress as your website builder is a good option. It’s the type of content management that allows you to both host and build your site. 

WordPress has a template system and plugin architecture, allowing you to modify your site easily. This is to make your website correspond with your online store, portfolio, blog or business. 

This site builder has over 8,000 free themes that you can freely choose to get the image you want for your business.

Pros:

  • Easy to customise designs
  • User-friendly
  • Responsive
  • Great SEO plugins (e.g. Yoast SEO)
  • Rank higher on SERPs.

Cons:

  • Constant plugins updates
  • Vulnerable to hacks

Due to the popularity of WordPress, many hackers have targeted this site builder. However, you can boost your security by enabling the Web Application Firewall.

Wix

Wix has impressive layouts for various businesses. They have great templates for restaurants, online stores, as well as other small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

In addition, Wix is also beginner-friendly, and you can try it for free, just like WordPress. This site builder has impressive layouts for various businesses, like restaurants and online stores.

Pros:

  • Excellent template choices
  • App market integration
  • Animation option
  • Artificial design intelligence
  • Automatic site backup

Cons:

  • The templates are difficult to change once set.
  • Expensive upgrade 

Step #3: Determine Your Website Layout

Once you’ve chosen your platform, the next thing you should do is conceptualise the layout of your website. You can either choose a pre-designed template made by a professional web designer or start from scratch. 

To do this, you need to map out the design of your website on a piece of paper before starting to drag and drop. If the result of designing your own website doesn’t look promising, remember that you can always hire a website design agency or a freelance web designer.

Step #4: Get a Domain Name

After you have determined your website’s layout, it’s time to register your domain name. Your domain name serves as your internet address, so it’s pretty important.

In addition, it’s a determining factor for online success. By having a customised domain, internet users will see your website as trustworthy and more professional.

Thus, it’s very essential to choose your domain name correctly to aid search engines like Google and Bing to grasp what your site is about. This way, your site will get crawled by web crawlers easily, bringing more traffic and leads to your website.

Ensure to make your domain name short and simple yet professional and memorable. Choose a suggestive name that best describes your business.

Step #5: Prepare Your Site’s Content

Once you get your domain name, make sure to prepare your site’s content together. This comprises: 

  • Logo
  • Images
  • Text
  • Videos and more.

It’s also best to choose a palette of colour and font that best represents your brand or business. 

Step #6: Make Sure to Have the Right Pages on Your Site

 Having the right pages on your site is significant to your business. This is because it helps your audiences navigate your site easily and find the information they need quickly.

Some of the required pages for multiple-page website design are: 

Step #7: Designing Your Own Website Elements

If you’ve got your domain name already, have your content ready and have established your pages, designing your own website is next.

Make sure to use your brand identity as a guide to delivering your message to your audience. In addition, the voice of your brand should be distinct and consistent throughout your pages.

Furthermore, consider usability to make navigation easy to give an overall exceptional experience to your visitors. Some elements include:

  • Website Architecture
  • Colours
  • Menu
  • Fonts
  • Header and Footer
  • Scroll Effects
  • Whitespace

Step #8: Make It Mobile-Friendly

Designing your own website to be mobile-friendly will significantly impact your website traffic. This is because web users are likely to stay longer on your page if they load fast on mobile. 

According to a report, over 5.29 billion people are mobile users. Given this number, there’s a high possibility of getting large traffic to your site as long as you make it mobile-friendly.

Step #9: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

After designing your own website, the next thing you need to work on is your search engine optimisation. This is a great way to grow your visitors organically and increase your website traffic.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a method of optimising your content to rank better on search engines page results (SERPs). However, SEO takes time and persistence to come to fruition.

Part of search engine optimisation are:

  • Internal Links
  • Alt Text
  • On-page SEO
  • Keyword Research

You can monitor the performance and growth of your website via the available tracking tools, such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics.

Step #9: Publish and Update

Publishing and updating your site is the subsequent step in designing your own website. Once your website is published, it’ll be available to internet users, so make sure that everything on your site is good to go before hitting that published button.

Step #10: Engage with Your Visitors and Ask for Feedbacks

Once all your content is SEO-optimised, it’s best to engage with your visitors and ask for their feedback. This way, your audiences will feel involved and important. 

You can engage with your visitors through LiveChat, Newsletter (Email), Social Media and Forms.