To truly give your startup web business a professional appearance, custom web designs can help elevate your brand. Whether you are working with a graphic design professional or want to learn custom web design as a personal skill, this guide will help you map out the process from planning to deployment. Custom web design gives you an opportunity to map out the visual layout of your brand from a user experience, customizing the layout, images, fonts and navigation. With careful attention to detail you can build an effective site that improves brand equity, increases conversion rates and gets your new company started in the right direction.
Developing Your Design: Layout Elements
Think of yourself as an artist with a blank canvas. When building a custom layout you want to start by answering a few basic questions. Think about your goals for the site, the target audience, the conversion objectives and branding aims. Start by asking yourself: what should my site convey and what do I want visitors to do? Whether your startup is seeking to generate new leads from clients, make sales of products or build loyal readers, you should design according to your conversion objectives.
Let’s suppose your startup markets local business professionals and you’re generating leads for your partners – in order to optimize your site layout and design, you should think about visual elements which appeal to the demographic. Your website should have a unique visual persona which is conveyed through professional fonts, logos, quality images (whether you take your own or purchase stock photos), properly balanced color, accessible navigation and an intuitive layout.
Start by mapping out a user scenario based upon how your site is presented. In this case, a user might visit your home page from a search engine looking to inquire about local accountants. After reading the content and mission statement on your site, he then begins to explore the site to gain a sense of how you can help solve the problem. In the example on the left, you can see the visual map of a potential conversion and should design each element to make the navigation to the conversion outcome easier.
Of course, branding and visual elements are important for ensuring the user remains on the site and establishes trust with your brand. Adding visual elements such as testimonials, trust seals and a clean layout can encourage further action. You should emphasize the conversion and navigation aspects of your site so users are encouraged to interact with the site.
Coding Your Design: HTML / CSS and Testing
Working through various drafts of your design in Photoshop, you should get feedback from colleagues, partners or friends. Get a sense of which visual elements work best. Once you have narrowed it down to a design and layout structure, you should then proceed to code the design in HTML and CSS (cascading style sheets which controls fonts and layout elements.) If necessary you should hire a programming to code your design, and should consider implementing it within the software that best suits your purposes. For example, a corporate or blog layout should be coded for Wordpress or another CMS (content management system) while an e-Commerce cart should be written in the proper template style. With a quality coded design you can proceed to testing and analyzing the various visual elements based upon feedback.
