When you’re just starting your business, before you start thinking about a website, it’s good to think about how you want your business to be perceived. And when DIYing your own website, its sometimes hard to know what direction to go in when you start out because you just don’t know what’s available to use to express your brand. So first, think about a few things.
How do you want people to think about your business? Is it friendly? Professional? Quirky?
When others talk about your business what do you hope they will say?
If My Business Were a Storefront…
The way your business shows up and the feeling it gives off should be in line with what you offer. One way to envision this is to ask yourself, if my business were a brick and mortar storefront, what would it look like. If customers were to walk through the door, what would they see inside?
Then take those images and turn them into elements for your website. Consider things that would help convey the same feelings, the same sights. Consider images, fonts, colors, icons, illustrations…and make sure they are in line with how you want people to think about your business, and the overall perception you want them to have.
By this I mean, if you are envisioning a storefront with delicate pastries or intricately designed stationary, it would be hard to convey that same feeling if you have images of elephants in a waterhole and a font that looks like it’s made out of trees. A little exaggerated, but you get the idea.
Where to Look for Creative Inspiration
If you’re like a lot of people the first place you turn for inspiration is Pinterest. Nothing wrong with that! There are so many ideas…a few keywords to get you started when looking for color and fonts? Brand Board and (your topic) web design.
There are several resources pro designers go for inspiration and to see a showcase of design work that might inspire you, too. Two of which are behance.net and dribbble.com.
Creative Resources
Do you want to add small details, like icons and illustrations to take your design up a notch? Or maybe you don’t know where to start when looking for images when they can’t afford a professional photographer?
At the time of writing this these have free options for you to download and play with. Make sure to check into the licenses describing in what ways you are allowed to use each resource. (Some links below are affiliate links and marked with an asterisk *. At no additional cost to you I may receive something in exchange for you making a purchase at the source.)
Stock Images (I strongly suggest you use your own images of you are able!)
pexels.com – a wide selection of donated images from a huge community of photographers
Nappy – “Beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people. For free.“
Creative Market* – High resolution images of people, places, animals, and objects
Icons
thenounproject.com
simpleicons.org
icons8.com
Take Action
You’ve been trying to DIY and things aren’t quite coming together the way you wanted. You know you can help more of those you were meant to serve but DIYing is taking so much of your time and energy not to mention the researching how to do everything is so frustrating!
Schedule a call and let’s talk about your real needs and how I can help you get online.
