Website Design Ideas for Practicing Design
We’ve put together some of the best website design ideas to delight and inspire you. We’ve also created a seven-step process to generate ideas based on your target audience’s needs and business goals.
Whether you’re a design agency, startup, small business, or solopreneur looking for inspiration, this article will guide you through the best web design trends and how they solve users’ problems.
Prototype and test your website design ideas with UXPin–the world’s most sophisticated design tool. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features and create better user experiences for your website’s visitors.
How to Create Website Design Ideas
For most businesses, the goal is to attract customers using your website. While aesthetics and visual design are essential for great website design, a user-centered mindset is crucial for your website’s success.
This seven-step process will help determine which website ideas and features work best for your target audience.
Conduct thorough user research
User research includes gathering data about your target audience, their needs, goals, and motivations. UX designers use various methods to collect this data and create user personas, including interviews, surveys, usability testing, and focus groups.
Identify the website’s main objectives
Use your research to determine your website’s primary goals and how it will serve users. It’ll also help you create the messaging and language. For example, a website targeting a teenage audience will look very different from one designed to attract retirees. These users will have different needs and priorities, which is why step one is so important.
Create a user journey map
A user journey map is a visual representation of the steps users take to achieve their goals on the website. It helps to understand the user’s perspective and identify potential pain points and areas for improvement.
Generate design ideas
Use your user research and journey maps (you may have several user flows) to brainstorm design ideas that can help users achieve their goals and solve any pain points identified. UX designers often use sketches and paper prototypes to generate many ideas quickly.
Refine and prioritize the ideas
Review your ideas and select those that align with the website’s objectives and offer the most value to the users. Prioritize the ideas based on their importance and feasibility.
Create wireframes and prototypes
Use the best ideas to create website wireframes and prototypes. Wireframes help visualize the website’s structure and define the information architecture.
You can use the wireframes as a foundation for high-fidelity prototypes to test your ideas and gather feedback from your target audience, other designers, and stakeholders.
Iterate and refine
Use the feedback to make changes and refine your designs. Repeat this process until you have a final website that meets user needs while achieving your business goals–i.e., more signups, sales, blog views, etc.
5 eCommerce Website Design Ideas
Creative hover effects
Ukrainian-based brand Mr. Pops uses a clever emoji hover effect for its product images. This small design choice surprises users while creating a fun and positive brand impression–perfect for an ice cream store.
Key takeaway: be detail-oriented and find subtle ways to be creative and engage users. These small details help brand awareness and encourage people to buy from your online store.
On-brand color palette
Popcorn eCommerce brand Popcornopolis uses bright colors to increase brand awareness and highlight each page’s most important features. Designers have also done a fantastic job of keeping the most important content and CTAs (call-to-action) above the fold on product pages, enabling users to get to the checkout and complete a purchase fast.
Key takeaway: your color scheme is one of the most critical brand elements, but it must also help users complete their goals. It’s also vital to prioritize content and display the most important design elements above the fold to reduce scrolling–this will get users to complete purchases faster.
Bold minimalist typography
Wukiyo uses bold minimalist typography to make text easy to read. The website also uses oversized buttons with a bright blue for the most important CTA–”ADD TO CART.” The blue stands out from the website’s otherwise muted color palette.
Key takeaway: choose a legible font that’s easy to read. You also want to prioritize content, so you only present enough for users to make decisions. And lastly, always make sure your most important CTA is prominent using size and color.
Shopping cart drawer
Premium soda brand Perfy uses bold colors and UI elements to reinforce its brand and product range. A drawer opens when someone adds a product to the cart, revealing the shopper’s basket with a CTA to checkout.
The drawer also provides important messaging to help alleviate any hesitation, including Perfy’s shipping and refund policy. Below that, there are recommended products to increase business value.
Key takeaway: design ways to get users to checkout effortlessly while anticipating and addressing any hesitations. Make sure you use clear, succinct language so users can comprehend messaging quickly and make a decision.
Above the fold product page
Like Popcornopolis, Verve Coffee Roasters uses an above-the-fold, 3-column product page layout. Ample whitespace surrounds the primary CTA with price and quantity selection to help the most important prominent. The product details use keywords rather than lengthy descriptions so that users can make a decision quickly.
Verve’s cart drawer informs shoppers about free shipping while recommending related products to increase transaction value.
Key takeaway: optimize product pages for scannability and reduce the need to read whenever possible by combining text and graphics. Less is always more–don’t be afraid of using white space to make important content stand out. eCommerce web design must incorporate opportunities to increase transaction value with upsells and cross-sells.
5 SaaS/Digital Product Web Design Ideas
Minimalist pricing page design
11Sight’s pricing page uses a black-and-white design with bright green accents to highlight important content and actions. Designers also use a contrasting layout to draw attention to the product’s premium plan, which offers the most value to users and the business.
Key takeaway: design pricing pages that are easy for
website visitors to understand with minimal text and distractions, and prominent CTAs.
Draw attention with white space
Agorapulse’s homepage uses a single-column design with lots of white space, instantly drawing your eyes to the title and CTAs. Designers also do an excellent job summarizing the product’s key benefits from a user’s perspective. While there are two CTAs, it’s obvious which one is the most important with its bright background and light text.
Agorapulse uses a sticky header navigation bar to keep these CTAs visible as users scroll, so they can take action whenever they’re ready.
Key takeaway: if you have more than one CTA, always ensure the primary action is more prominent than the other. Highlight your product’s benefits over features as high on the web page as possible so your site’s visitors know precisely what your business can do for them.
Tell your story
Venture capital firm Nordic Eye uses video for its homepage hero to tell its brand story and connect with website visitors immediately. Video and visuals are excellent ways to tell users who you are and what you do. Short product demos, walk-throughs, etc., allow users to explore your product and determine whether it solves their problems.
Key takeaway: video is a powerful medium for creating instant connections and demonstrating your product/company’s strengths. Learn about the video optimization tips for user experience.
Speak to your target audience
Investment app Alinea speaks directly to its target Gen Z audience using relatable, empathetic language. Designers use a clever homepage hero design with a prominent CTA, an app store review widget demonstrating social proof, and leading media publications that have featured the product.
Key takeaway: understanding your target audience and what they value most is critical for successful web design. A homepage hero must describe why your product exists and eliminate any doubts before website visitors will take action.
Cross-functional app website
Many digital products offer web and mobile applications. Weera’s homepage gives users three options to use their family-orientated app–web, iOS, and Android. These choices enable users to try your product using their preferred medium, increasing the likelihood of signing up.
Key takeaway: if you have a cross-platform application, allow users to choose how they want to experience your digital product. Placing these choices as high on the page as possible reduces scrolling while increasing conversions.
Resources for website design ideas
Here are some excellent resources if you’re looking for some web design inspiration.
- Awwwards: a vast collection of some of the world’s best web designs
- Themeforest: the world’s largest marketplace for WordPress themes, website templates, plugins, and digital tools
- Behance: a social network for designers to share UI design ideas
- Dribbble: a Behance alternative
Build Great Websites With UXPin
UXPin’s advanced design technology enables designers to prototype and test their web design ideas with functionality and fidelity comparable to the final product.
With UXPin, designers get meaningful feedback from end-users and stakeholders to iterate with better accuracy, delivering high-quality results.
Whether you’re designing a new website, landing page, eCommerce store, or cross-platform application, UXPin offers the tools and features to create interactive prototypes that look and feel like the final product.
Take your web development to the next level with the world’s most advanced design tool. Sign up for a free trial to explore UXPin’s advanced features.
