According to a report, about 75 percent of consumers tend to buy from a business that knows their name. Thus, it’s a good idea to design your website in a way that enhances customer experience, like having a customer see their name upon signup or registration. This is why personalizing your approach is crucial, and one way to achieve a more personalized connection is through a great website design not found anywhere else.
Of course, you should have something prepared for your guest users, too. Show them how fast, helpful, user-friendly, and interactive your website is. This begs the question: What are the great tools you can use to design a website?
Prototyping Tools
Prototyping tools enable clients and designers to collaborate better because they can experience a visual overview of the actual web design. It eliminates conflicting perspectives and helps teams explore more options. You can build and test or experiment using a prototyping tool to fully showcase your creativity.
One good example of a prototyping tool is Invision. It’s important to know how to use InVision for more effective results. It’s one of the most popular prototyping tools in the world, with new features constantly added to help designers in prototyping more efficiently.
Here are the benefits of using prototyping tools:
- Validate your design and make improvements without having to launch it on the web to test.
- Add animations and interactions to static images. Upload several file types, such as JPG, PNG, AI, GIF, and PSD.
- Integrate prototyping tools, like InVision, with other apps such as Slack, Trello, Dropbox, Box, and JIRA.
Wireframing Tools for designing a website
Creating a wireframe is essential in website design. It’s like your blueprint when building a house. A wireframe refers to a visual mockup outlining the basic website, landing page, or app structure. It is a web design element that is fairly simple, with basic elements and shapes rearranged easily and quickly for approval before you move on to the next level of a prototype.
It’s important to choose a wireframe tool that best fits the needs of your team, giving your design process a great foundation. In that way, you can get your design team on the same page, streamlining your design process.
Here are the basic wireframing criteria you should consider when choosing a wireframing tool:
- Stable and Up-to-Date Software: Be cautious when choosing a wireframing tool because even some of the major players in the industry have yet to update their program. That’s why you should narrow down your choices to apps with an active development team.
- User Interface or UI Kit: There are wireframing apps with a built-in UI component library, but you can also upload pre-designed UI kits from third parties.
- Mockup Fidelity Levels: Choose a wireframing tool that offers a full range of capabilities, from basic or low-fidelity wireframes to higher-fidelity mockups.
Graphic Design Tools
When it comes to graphic web design, Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular commercial graphics editors available for Windows and Mac. It is specifically created for professional designers and photographers. The best tools and features include brushes, work enhancement features, and filters, wherein you can automatically add effects to images or a selected image section.
Here are the other big names in graphic web design:
- Pixlr: It’s a great alternative to Adobe Photoshop, wherein you can easily edit images without requiring any additional software license.
- Wacom Bamboo: With this graphic design tool, you can edit, alter, draw, design, paint, craft, and finetune a design using the right tools.
- Adobe Creative Suite: You can synchronize different web design elements such as photos, files, design assets, fonts, settings, Adobe Stock, and metadata automatically. Also, it allows you to control creative cloud libraries and start your web design project on any device.
- PicMarkr: Insert a watermark of the image that is made easy and simple with PicMarkr. It’s also very helpful for copyrighting.
Content Management System and Website Builder
If you’re a newbie when it comes to website design, relying on a website builder and content management system is a good idea. One of the best content management system is WordPress, which is a free web open-source software, allowing you to launch any type of website.
Here are some tips when choosing the right content management software for you:
- Choose one that offers ready-made templates to customize your website.
- Choose one that allows you to integrate popular third-party tools, like search engine optimization or SEO, email marketing platforms, and payment gateways.
- Availability of useful plugins to perform various functions your website would need, including plugins that promote security, speed, and reliability.
Link-Building Tools
A new website can benefit from link-building tools. The links that your competitors have can be overwhelming, so you might also want to get links for your new website to help promote your business. Of course, you want your website to be link-worthy.
Here are some tips to help you start building links:
- Create Great Content: A great website should have relevant, useful, and engaging content. While buying links is possible, white-hat link-building technique is the preferred option. This link building strategy allows you to gain more traffic and establish a good reputation, authority, and credibility.
- Resolve 404s: One crucial aspect of web design is to ensure that any error like 404 errors are removed and avoided. Google Search Console and crawlers can help you identify these types of errors. Also, you have to make sure that your external links are working properly. By doing so, you can enhance user experience and avoid customer frustration that can affect your traffic, conversions, and sales.
- Claim Your Listings and Social Channels: Claiming your business listings and social channels can take time, but it’s highly beneficial for your new website. You can share your articles or blog posts on social media sites by making sure that buttons are available for such purpose.
Conclusion
When it comes to website design, there are a lot of great tools you can use, from wireframing and prototyping, to link-building tools and website builders. Website design is not all about the aesthetic appeal, but also the speed, reliability, user experience, and content. That’s why the tools above can be used to create a great website that possesses all the best qualities that gear towards a successful website.
George Starin
George Starin is a web developer who works with individuals and entrepreneurs to build effective websites. George is responsible for the back-end and front-end of creating a website – from choosing the right codes to use and using the appropriate design interface. George also maintains websites by fixing bugs and errors and upgrading it whenever necessary.
During his free time, George spends time with his family and writes articles on web development.
