Design Series Part III – Creating Website Pages, Adding Content and Publishing
Your website is a combination of several components. It begins with deciding the domain name and hosting service, designing it and ends with setting it up. Our website design series helps you design your website easily. We began by selecting the right theme followed by colour and fonts for your website. With the above two steps, you’ve achieved creating the visual blueprint of your website. Now, we move on to the most crucial aspect of a website – the content.
In this final article of the design series, we will explore content in-depth, including – compiling data, creating pages and SEO, followed by testing and lastly, making your website live!
Adding Website Pages
Your business niche decides the look and feel of your website design along with the pages that need to be added. However, there are certain pages that you mustn’t compromise on.
- Homepage
- About Us
- Contact Us
- Product offering page
First impressions matter a lot and your homepage is your website’s deal-breaker. Not only do the right colours and fonts matter on this page but also the amount of content on it. If you design this page carefully, you increase the chances for your end-user to scroll through it and might also visit other pages.
Tip: Take care that all your website pages follow your branding guidelines. Both in terms of design and content.
Apart from the above-mentioned pages, if you’re a business website, as opposed to a blog, then you may as well add a ‘Blog’ page.
Furthermore, having sections on your website is important – the header, body and footer. Not only should your pages look appealing (content and branding) but they must also be easy to navigate.
Now, that you’ve seen the pages you must add to your website or blog, it is now time to focus on the content that goes in them.
Content – What and Why?
Content is data and experiences aimed at the target audience. Content can be in written form or can be depicted pictorially.
When it comes to website content, one of the key things to remember is that it must be unique. Unique content helps you establish your brand and even offers a different experience to your end-user. Say, for instance, you aren’t using unique content somewhere, then make sure you cite the original source. This not only avoids plagiarism but also helps you build your credibility.
Next, is the amount of content that goes on the page. The idea is to neither have too much or too little. According to research, in general, people read 25% less when reading it on a screen. Too much content can be off-putting to the reader and might result in higher page bounce.
Content is important when it comes to ranking your website on search engines. Hence, you must take care that all your content is optimised i.e you take care of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Certain things to achieve a good SEO ranking include the use of targeted keywords, internal linking, backlinks, and more. If you’re a beginner, a good SEO practise is to think from your target audience’s perspective and assess if your webpages can answer all their queries positively, and accordingly do your keyword research.
To summarise:
- Unique branded content
- Moderate content length
- On-point SEO practices
Testing your website
At this point in time, your website is ready. The theme fits your niche, the content is decided, and the pages have been created keeping in mind the brand colours and fonts. Now, all that remains is publishing your website to the world.
Hang on! You first need to test your website.
Here is a simple checklist:
- Check if your website is optimised and responsive for all devices (desktop, mobile, tablets)
- Check your content and proofread it for spelling and grammar
- Check if all the links embedded in your website content, both external and internal are working properly
- Check the page load time for your website. The faster the better
- Check your website for branding
- Check the SEO keywords and other elements
All checked? All Good? Go ahead — Hit Publish
Congratulations! Your website is ready and can now be live!
Your website is a running project, there will always be scope for improvement, updating the content and pages, checking the plugins installed, the links embedded etc. If your website is your source of income, adding Analytics to your website would be of great help!
Keeping a track of analytics can help you in figuring out the most visited pages, products and more. There are plenty of ways to track the behaviour of your end-users on your website – Analytics, Heatmaps, etc.
Conclusion
Designing a website may seem like an uphill task, however, with the right planning and precision, it is a rewarding one! To summarise, take care of your theme, your branding guidelines (colours and fonts) and the content that goes on your website.
So, what are you waiting for? Register your domain and hosting, and start designing your website today!
We hope this design series helps you design your website — easily and effectively.
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below! Also, head to our Websites category on the blog to know more and stay updated.
