Designing a professional website for your business should not be taken lightly because first impressions count. When visitors first see your website they only take a few seconds to decide whether to stay or leave. Your best solution is to hire a professional website designer because it’s what they do every day and have probably been building websites for many years. They will match the design with your business and build it in such a way that it will be search engine friendly.
But what if you want to design your own website?
Perhaps you want to save money or are a do-it-yourself kind of person. Of course it will take longer and you’ll make many mistakes, however you’ll have the satisfaction of having designed it yourself. One of the major obstacles during the design process is to create a design that matches your business.
4 ways to come up with a beautiful design for your business website
1. View other websites on the net
Why reinvent the wheel when you can use the Internet to view as many professionally built websites as you want. Keep in mind it’s illegal to copy the exact design of any site you see however you can design your site in a similar way. For example instead of having the navigation menu at the top put it on the left side of the content. You can also experiment with different color combinations, backgrounds, fonts, font colors and images.
2. Use a color schemer
I often use a color schemer to try different color combinations for a website. This is very useful when you like one particular color but don’t know what other colors would blend with it. For example you may have an orange header banner but don’t know what colors to use for the website’s background, copy and navigation links.
3. Visit design galleries
These are sites on the web that display a multitude of professional designs. I often get inspired by looking at the different designs presented then use some of their design elements in my own designs. Visit 16 best web design galleries to find inspiration for your next design.
4. View portfolios of professional web design companies
If you like the designs created by a specific web designer visit their portfolio page. Usually you’ll find a portfolio link on their website because they want to showcase the best designs to attract future customers.
Let me know what methods you use to come up with a beautiful design for your own website or your clients’ sites by writing your comments below.
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Wow, what a misleading article. The title should be rather “how to legally copy a design from another source”.
I totally disagree…the 4 points mentioned don’t advocate copying the designs but getting inspirational ideas. I do the same when finding ideas for writing unique articles. The articles are completely unique but ideas received from reading other articles triggered new ideas of my own.