06. Customize your template to your brand

Your website is the face of your personal or business brand and is often the first touchpoint that people have with you, so you’ll want to make sure that it’s uniquely yours. Before you get lost in the details, establish clear branding guidelines to keep your anchored. These guidelines should shape your site design—as well as the nitty-gritty details like the tone of your microcopy, your logo placement and the color of your buttons.

A great way to get started is by creating a simple idea map with a pen and paper. In the center of your map, write down the type of site you plan to make. Think about the words and phrases that describe the vibe you’re going for. Write each phrase in separate circles stemming from your initial idea.

Once you’ve broken down your brand into individual components, it will be much easier to tackle larger tasks. Reflect on this map as you design your first logo or ruminate on the right types of imagery to include on your site.

Remember, a well-designed website is visually appealing, easy to navigate and aligned with your brand identity. Taking the time to get this right can pay dividends in the long run.

From a more tactical perspective, here are several steps you’ll want to take when personalizing your site.

Craft a website color theme

The use of color is not only for making your site look nice. Your color palette should align with your brand identity. Color psychology is important to take into consideration, as colors have the power to affect and evoke specific emotions and behaviors.

For example, blue has become a common color used in branding corporations and businesses, particularly in the tech field—most likely because blue is associated with stability and reliability. However, blue can also reflect sadness, hence the term “feeling blue.” Orange, for example, is generally paired with feelings of freshness and vitality. Keep in mind that the feeling correlated with a color also depends on the shade and what other colors it’s paired with. These are both important points to consider when choosing your website color scheme.

07. Build your site structure

A pretty site means nothing if it’s clunky and difficult to navigate. Before releasing your site to the world, check that your site makes it easy for visitors to find the exact pages that they’re looking for. There are several main components to bear in mind, as listed below.

Create your sitemap

Your sitemap is the blueprint of your site’s architecture. It includes all the pages and content you plan to create, so web crawlers like Google can better find and understand your pages. A sitemap typically needs updating whenever you add pages or move pages around, but systems like SiteWebs automatically create and update your sitemap for you.

Optimize your navigation menu

Your navigation menu guides your human visitors to the right pages on your site. It’s usually displayed as a horizontal or vertical bar on your site with links to several different pages. As a general rule of thumb, your site should be organized in a way that enables a visitor to move from one page to another in three clicks or less.

But your main menu does not—and should not have to—include all of your site pages. Link to the most important or popular pages from here, and provide an easy way for visitors to get back to where they started. (One of the best ways of achieving this is by adding a clickable logo at the top of your page that leads visitors back to the homepage.)

Check how your favorite sites design their navigation menus for inspiration. You may, for instance, want to include a mega menu that’s more visual in nature and allows users to hover over a main menu category to see subcategories of links.

Alternatively, if you’re creating a simple website with fewer pages, you can have a simple anchor menu at the top of your page that links to specific pages or specific sections on a page.

You’ll also want to spend time optimizing a mobile version of your menu to make sure everything translates clearly to phones and tablets.

To set up a menu in the SiteWebs editor, just head to your side panel on the left side of the editor and click on “+” at the top of the panel to add an element. Then, select “Menu & Anchor” from the drop-down and choose your desired style.

When designing web pages for your professional website, consider adding these pages:

An inviting homepage. This is the face of your website, which means that you have to make it beautiful, yet informational. You should strive to present all the crucial elements right from the get-go. This way, clients will instantly understand who you are and what you do.

A shop or gallery. This is the center of your site where visitors can browse through your products or services. Create product listings, manage inventory and process transactions all from one centralized dashboard. Dedicate time to write product descriptions that will grab potential customers’ attention. The same goes for your product photography to ensure that your items are displayed in their very best light.

A personable About page. Use this page as your online business card. It’s the spot where you can present who you are, what you stand for, your strengths, values and any other crucial information you think your visitors should know about your team and your business.

An easy-to-find contact section. Don’t leave your site visitors astray by making them search for your contact information. Dedicate a page to list contact numbers, email, social links and any other way users can get in touch with you. In addition, it’s a good practice to add your essential contact details on your website footer.

An engaging blog. By starting a blog, you’ll be able to continuously add regular and fresh content to your website. You’ll have the chance to establish yourself as an expert in your field while giving your SEO efforts a well-deserved boost. Give our blog maker a go, when you’re ready to start.

09. Create engaging content

As people interact with your website, you’ll want to make sure you’re grabbing their attention and keeping it. The best way to do this is by optimizing and diversifying how you relay information.

Start by thinking about the various types of content you can host on your website. There’s text, photography, videos, animation and so much more. Once you have a grasp on all of your options, it’s time to decide how to organize it.

Consider your content hierarchy

For your visitors to feel comfortable and at home while browsing, it’s important to keep your site as organized as possible. Think about hierarchy here: you’ll want your most eye-catching and important content to be placed above the fold (in other words, the area that’s visible on your website without visitors having to scroll).

“Site hierarchy and the information you provide your visitors with is more than just how your site looks. This will also directly impact how many visitors ultimately buy your products. You’ll want to be clear about your offerings through your content, your visuals and your buttons right from the get go to ensure visitors recognize your value right away.”

Furthermore, take note that some of your readers are only skimming your content. To make their lives easier and to make your content stand out, consider how you can optimize your design so your audience can get the most out of your content.

To do so, consider which written information can be made more digestible and visual with the use of media features (videos, images and animations, infographics for example). Make certain headers and other important bits of information stand out more than others by opting for a larger font or a bright color that contrasts with the background.

Looking to create content for your website? Consider using AI tools to speed up the process for you. Read all about Wix’s next steps on AI text generation for websites and AI website creation. Or, get started by understanding more about how to build a website with AI.

Consider SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of optimizing your site so your pages can rank higher on search engine result pages. When launching a new website from scratch, it’s vital to set your site up for success so it can be found by Google. The more exposure you get, the more likely it is for prospective clients to find your site and book your services, buy your products or read your blog.

“Leveraging SEO and integrating it into the website creation process is vital. Various studies have shown that organic search is the single greatest provider of traffic to websites – with that being even more pronounced within the B2B context. To that, traffic from organic search, when done correctly is essentially built to last (with proper maintenance over time, of course) and forms a crucial part of a site’s long-term growth.”

Enhancing your website’s visibility on search engines like Google is essential for driving organic traffic to your pages. Fortunately, every SiteWebs site starts out with a solid infrastructure that already exceeds the needs of search engines, giving you a strong SEO foundation in organic search. From there, Wix SEO tools make it easy for you to optimize your reach even further. Capabilities include:

SEO Assistant: Every SiteWebs site comes with an SEO Assistant. Just put in your focus keywords for the page you’re working on, and your SEO Assistant will tell you if there’s anything you can do to further optimize it.

SiteWebs seo assistant

Keyword research: SiteWebs provides keyword research tools to help you discover relevant keywords for your content.

On-page SEO: Easily optimize your meta titles, descriptions and headers to improve your on-page SEO.

Image SEO: Optimize your images with alt tags and compress them to improve page loading times.

AI meta tag creation: Use AI to generate optimized title tags and meta descriptions for each of your pages.

Sitemap generation: SiteWebs generates XML sitemaps to help search engines crawl and index your site effectively.

Mobile optimization: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly for better search rankings.

Local SEO: If you have a local business, use SiteWebs local SEO tools to improve your visibility in local searches.

SEO analytics: Monitor your website’s SEO performance with built-in analytics and reports.

Rich results: Implement rich snippets and schema markup to make your search results stand out.

Backlink tracking: Keep an eye on your backlink profile to improve your site’s authority.

You’ll also have the ability to utilize additional SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush.

Consider the mobile experience

As you build your site, keep in mind that a significant amount of consumers will be visiting your site from their smartphones. In fact, as of April 2021, over 50% of internet use comes from cell phones and tablets. It’s because of this that Google established mobile-first indexing, a system in which the search engine predominantly determines website ranking based on mobile websites, not desktop.

As mobile web surfing becomes even more entrenched in our culture, it’s essential to invest time in mobile features as well as design to provide a smooth, intuitive user experience for those smaller screens. Whatever website creation platform you choose, make sure it has a mobile editor and the ability to adjust elements for mobile without it affecting the desktop version. You’ll also want a website builder that prioritizes performance and site speed. For example, SITEWEBS deploys performance-friendly website infrastructure, such as cache and lazy loading, to ensure faster sites.

Once you’re done with your site and happy with it, you may want to consider making your website an app as well.

11. Maintain and promote your website

Much like a work of art, a website is never truly “finished.” It’s an ever-evolving entity that demands regular attention to maintain its performance.

One of the primary advantages of using a website builder to create your site is that you can easily make additions and changes as needed in real time. By following these best practices, you can maintain a site that helps your business thrive online.

Your website can quickly become outdated over time, from its design to your keyword targeting and overall SEO strategy. Often, website designers find that they need to provide easier navigation with better bounce rates and other important site metrics. This is particularly important if you have found that sales on your online store are decreasing. Update your website as part of your website management strategy by adding new content regularly and making sure that your existing content is up-to-date.

Every published SiteWebs website has SiteWebs Analytics included in the Dashboard, which gives you actionable information and metrics about your website traffic. Learn which content is working best and how your visitors behave, then use these insights to fuel your marketing efforts.

It’s important to keep your website secure from hackers and malware. You can do this by installing security software and by keeping your website’s software up to date. It’s also crucial to use a platform that thoroughly incorporates website security such as SiteWebs, which provides a safe foundation for your website and gathers real-time insights to detect any threats.

It’s always a good idea to back up your website regularly. This way, if something happens to your website, you can restore it from a backup. Wix has a feature called Site History, which automatically creates site revisions every time you save or publish. This means that you can go back to a previous version of your site any time you want. You can also duplicate your site at any time to create a manual backup in your SiteWebs account. Be aware that the duplicated site is not automatically updated when you update your original site.

You also need to let people know about your site. You can promote your website through social media, email marketing, guest blogging or outreach marketing. Effective promotion ensures that your website reaches the right people and delivers the desired outcomes—whether you’re aiming to increase traffic, engagement or sales.