Whether you are thinking of creating a website on your own or considering contracting one, it might be useful to know some basic principles that you need to manage formerly to get down to work and the steps to follow in order to have a page with a minimum of quality.
1 - Form and content
A website has two equally important dimensions: the form and the content. There is no point in giving more importance to one or the other. A site that is visually powerful but poorly written or lacking in substance will not convey professionalism. Likewise, a page written by a master of language but with an unattractive or overly complex design will not invite the user to stay connected. The first step in creating a good, quality website is to consider the importance of these two aspects.
2 - Assembly is the ultimate
Plan. Never, never start building a website without a plan. This is the part that is often skipped by many people because it is considered a more "boring" phase and because of the impatience to start building the website directly. Perhaps it is also the most important part that makes the difference between a well thought out website and a makeshift one. Building on the fly, by sensations... is like starting a house without an architectural plan.
What should my plan contain?
The plan is to go ashore of what we have in our mind. It brings order to our ideas, it sheds light on what we are going to create and it will be transformed into a more coherent result. It will save us from wasting time on "now I change this, now I change that" and our work will be much more directed.
A minimum plan to start shaping a website should contain the following information:
Aim of the website
Imagine two websites of two shops. One of them aims to start selling products online. The other, which has not yet started selling online, wants to attract more visitors to the physical store. Although both have their product catalogue visible, the structure and messages that will be launched on the website will be completely different. Take some time to write down (and I mean write down) the objectives. main and secondary of your website.
Target audience
Essential. If we do not know who we are writing for, we will not communicate effectively. It is not "for everyone". It is very difficult to maintain such a neutral register that is suitable for everyone (perhaps Amazon can). We will find differences for example in the level of knowledge of the user. A company that sells technological product X will have to analyse the extent to which its audience knows about the subject in order to avoid using terms that are neither too technical nor too childish. A good exercise is to make a sketch of the "typical person" who is your audience: how old is he/she, where does he/she live, what are his/her concerns, how much does he/she know about the subject, how much does he/she know about it?
Messages and architecture
Once the objectives and audience have been identified, we can delve into the key messages (what do we want to say to these people?) and translate them into a basic architecture (the pages you need for this). In this step you can already have a general outline of your website.
Content development
The time has come to write. Write before setting up the website? Yes, of course this content can be conditioned by the design we do a posteriori but it should not be determined. Design cannot dictate what we write. It is necessary to start from a gross content and then adapt it to the design so that the two can mimic each other in a meaningful way.
3 - Look at the competition
Many people are reluctant to look at the competition either because they do not want to "copy" or because they want to be 110% original. Well, if you skip this step, you are depriving yourself of a very valuable source of information for complement your criteria. It's not about copying, it's about enrich your vision of the sector in which you move. You will see things you like, things you don't like, websites I want to be like, websites I don't like... All this will give you ideas that you can put into practice (or not) and inspiration to start assembling.
4 - Take care of colours and typography (or brand identity).
Make sure your brand identity is reflected throughout the website. If you don't have it yet, it's time to work on it.
As far as the web is concerned, it is essential to define a colour palette and have them identified with their corresponding code. Of course, choose them according to your audience and your sector (no more than two or three).
Nowadays there are many online tools that help us to choose colours that make sense without having to be expert designers:
With regard to typefaces, it is advisable to do not mix more than two.
PS: Brand identity or branding is a whole world and that is precisely why there are professionals who dedicate themselves exclusively to it, but this would be enough for a whole other post.
5 - Start the assembly
And finally, after completing the previous steps, we have the basic ingredients to start cooking. Content managers such as WordPress and Prestashop give us an affordable and intuitive technology to start reflecting on the screen what we have conceived on paper.
Do you want to leave it in the hands of professionals?