🔥 Design Webflow sites with AI
Your first website will teach you more through its failures than its successes. Most people start with the wrong questions. They ask about colors, fonts, and logos when they should be asking how their site will load on a phone with poor reception, or what happens when someone using a screen reader tries to buy their product. The decisions you make in the first week will follow you for years, and undoing them costs more than getting them right from the start.
Over 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. This statistic alone should change how you approach every design choice. Google now evaluates all websites using its mobile Googlebot first, meaning the mobile version of your site determines how you rank in search results. A beautiful desktop site means nothing if your mobile version loads slowly or displays poorly.
Touch targets need sizing that accounts for fingers, not mouse cursors. Apple recommends touch targets of at least 44x44 pixels. Google suggests 48x48 pixels. These numbers seem small until you try tapping a 30-pixel button on a moving bus and hit the wrong link three times in a row.
Build for the smallest screen first, then expand outward. This approach forces you to prioritize content and strip away elements that serve no purpose. Breakpoints allow your layout to adjust across different screen sizes, but they work best when the core design already functions at its smallest.
A website runs on a server, and the type you choose affects speed, uptime, and how much control you have over the backend. Shared servers split resources among many sites, which keeps costs low but can slow things down during traffic spikes. A VPS gives you dedicated space at a higher price. For content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, some providers offer hosting for wordpress and similar platforms with pre-configured settings that reduce setup time.
Matching your server type to your CMS matters more than most beginners realize. A portfolio site with static pages needs far less than an e-commerce store processing payments daily.
Google measures loading performance through Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics that directly affect your search rankings. Three numbers matter most. Largest Contentful Paint should occur within 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load. Interaction To Next Paint, which replaced First Input Delay in March 2024, should stay below 200 milliseconds. Cumulative Layout Shift should remain under 0.1 to prevent elements from jumping around while users try to read or click.
These measurements come from real users visiting your site. A page that loads in 2 seconds on your high-speed office connection might take 8 seconds on a rural connection. Test your site under conditions worse than your own.
Compress images before uploading them. Remove plugins you stopped using. Minimize the scripts that run on each page load. Every extra request between your server and the visitor's browser adds time.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published by W3C, provide standards for making websites usable by people with disabilities. WCAG 2.2 was published in October 2023 and has since become an ISO standard. Three conformance levels exist. Level A covers minimum requirements. Level AA, which most regulations reference, requires all Level A and AA criteria to be met.
Color contrast between text and background must meet a minimum ratio of 4.5 to 1 at Level AA. This affects your color palette choices more than you might expect. That light gray text on white background? Probably fails.
Images need appropriate alt text. Decorative images that add no information can skip alt text entirely. Functional images, like a magnifying glass icon for search, should describe the action. Informative images should convey the message they contain. Nielsen Norman Group research emphasizes these distinctions.
A screen reader cannot interpret a button that has no label. A colorblind user cannot distinguish between red and green status indicators. A user with motor impairments cannot click a tiny checkbox. These are not edge cases. They represent a portion of your audience you exclude through carelessness.
Over 85% of websites now use HTTPS. Browsers like Chrome and Firefox warn users when a site lacks encryption, which erodes trust before your page even loads. Google has used HTTPS as a ranking factor since 2014.
An SSL certificate encrypts data transmitted between your server and visitors. For a site collecting any personal information, payment details, or login credentials, this protection is mandatory rather than optional. Free certificates exist through services like Let's Encrypt. Paid certificates provide additional validation features.
Keep your CMS and plugins updated. Most security breaches exploit known vulnerabilities that patches already fixed. Outdated software invites intrusion.
Google holds roughly 84% of the global search engine market, according to CMSWire. Building your site with SEO in mind from the beginning saves work later.
In March 2024, Google merged its Helpful Content System into its core ranking systems and reduced unhelpful content in search results by 45%. The message here is plain: write for the person reading, not for the algorithm. Search Engine Journal reports that 49% of marketers say organic search provides the best ROI of any marketing channel.
Your homepage matters most. Jakob Nielsen's research, conducted with Rolf Molich and refined in 1994, established heuristics that remain unchanged after three decades. A homepage is the starting point for most visits. Improvements there multiply value across your entire site.
Google Analytics 4 uses event-based tracking that captures user interactions across websites and apps. Setting it up early means you have data when you need to make decisions. Without analytics, you are guessing.
GA4 automatically tracks page views, scrolls, outbound clicks, and other common events through enhanced measurement features. Custom events let you track form submissions, video plays, button clicks, and whatever else matters to your goals.
The platform includes built-in privacy features that assist with GDPR and CCPA compliance, though it does not guarantee compliance on its own.
The ePrivacy Directive, amended in 2009, created the cookie consent requirements that populate the web with pop-ups. Under GDPR, cookies that are not strictly necessary for basic site function require explicit user consent before activation.
Consent must be opt-in. Pre-checked boxes violate the regulation. Implied consent through continued browsing violates the regulation. Automatic acceptance after a timer violates the regulation. Users must actively choose to accept cookies.
Non-compliance with GDPR can result in fines up to 4% of annual global revenue or €20 million, whichever is higher. You must maintain consent records for at least 5 years.
If your site reaches users in the EU, these rules apply to you regardless of where your business is located. A privacy policy and proper cookie consent mechanism are required elements, not suggestions.
Your first website will have problems. This is normal. Launch with the basics functioning correctly and improve from there. A working site that you update regularly beats a perfect site that never goes live.
