When you need a website representing your business, you want it to look its best. While many tools exist to help you create your own, there's no substitute for professional work. But what should you look for?
There are six basic types of website design services, each offering unique benefits.
Your brand's online presence impacts how people see you. Your website is your home base — the entry point to your business for people who find and connect with you online.
Each user's experience impacts their feelings about the brand and whether they want to engage further. An easy-to-use website will encourage visitors to click around, explore, and take the next step.
As a website service, design focuses on creating those positive experiences. Professional website designers understand the layouts, aesthetic combinations, and user interaction patterns that make a site work. They can align a website with your brand and make a positive impression on your potential customers.
Of course, the job is more than choosing the right color combination and photos. To create a functional website, designers need to know hardware and software basics. They must also understand basic coding, design tools, and best practices for user experience (UX) and user interface (UI).
Before you hire a professional website designer, you should know the options available. To get you started, here are six web page design types you can choose from, plus when you might need each one.
As the name suggests, custom web design is a unique website solution for your brand. Your designer hand-selects and arranges each element, from font and image choices to advanced plug-ins.
A custom design highlights the unique aspects of your brand and allows you to add higher-level functionality such as chatbots, embedded videos and image carousels, and member-only portals.
Custom services are appropriate for all types of websites and are essential in markets with stiff online competition.
Template-based design employs pre-built elements to create your website. Your designer will select from a library of functional, text, and visual elements to arrange each page and connect them via links.
There are pros and cons of using templates in web design. On the plus side, templates allow designers to create your website more quickly, so you can go live sooner. Template-based design may also cost less because your designer doesn't have to do as much hands-on work.
Templates are convenient, but they also limit your options. You may be unable to match your brand aesthetic as closely as you would like, and advanced functions may not be available.
Template-based design is most effective for brands that need a more straightforward website with a quicker time to launch. It also works well for single-page projects like a Contact Us page design.
Website development is the back-end process of making a website function. Although web developers may have design knowledge, they primarily work as programmers, using coding languages like JavaScript to build the technical aspects of the site.
Businesses hire developers to build a new site or change an existing site's functionality. Developers often work alongside designers on custom web design projects, focusing on user interaction with the site and ensuring an optimal experience.
SEO services help your website rank higher in search engines. Higher rankings mean more visibility and more opportunities for site traffic.
To earn those rankings, your site needs to appeal to Google's algorithm. You must arrange your site so crawlers can read it, add strategic internal links, and use keywords in website copy to match your audience's search behaviors.
Professional SEO services set your site up for success by incorporating SEO best practices. Google makes several significant changes to its algorithm every year, and any one of those changes can drop a site down the search results page.
SEO services benefit any website but are essential for businesses without a dedicated SEO management team.
Ecommerce websites must be user-friendly. Frustrating user interfaces can easily lead to early funnel bounces and abandoned carts, which are more common now than completed sales.
In 2024, cart abandonment reached a staggering 70%, meaning seven out of 10 customers added a product to their carts but left without buying.
Ecommerce website designers know what makes a buying experience smooth and user-friendly. They apply design, marketing, and sales best practices to create pages that reduce friction and guide buyers to purchase. These services benefit any business wanting to add an on-page purchase component.
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it evaluates the mobile version of a site to decide where it will rank. If a site doesn't adjust its layout based on a device's screen size and shape, the algorithm will see it as user-unfriendly.
Mobile-unfriendliness also hurts the user experience. Consumers spend an average of 56.8% of their online time on mobile phones, which drives 63% of web traffic worldwide. If your website looks sloppy or is challenging to navigate on a phone or tablet, you risk losing mobile users to a competitor's site.
Responsive designs adjust to any device, from smartphones to desktops. It's an essential service for any website.
Your best-fit web design service matches with your business goals, meets your technical needs, and fits within your budget. Start by reviewing the web design services list above and identify which would be the most useful.
If you haven't built a website or you need a complete overhaul, focus on end-to-end services like custom design and development. If you're improving or expanding on an existing site, identify the priority pages you need a designer to work on.
For example, if you're working to align your site with your customer journey, you might need a landing page design agency. If you're opening a new web store, ecommerce is the way to go.
Research agencies that offer the design services you need. Look at homepage design examples to learn each agency's style. Interview each one to find the best fit.
Whether you need UX design outsourcing or a complete website buildout, PixelPocket is here to help. We offer no-code website solutions on a subscription basis, and we create designs based on your needs.
PixelPocket makes designing and building your perfect website simple. Check out our subscription plan today and see what a no-fuss website design service looks like.
