In this day and age, running a successful business is heavily dependent on maintaining a website. Your business’s website is often the first point of contact for consumers looking to learn more about your brand as one of the first things a prospective customer will do after hearing about your business is search for it online.

But simply running an online store or advertising your services isn’t enough. If your brand is committed to creating an optimal experience for the customer, your website should echo that. Of course, once created you’ll want to maximize web traffic to your website, but where do you even start when it comes to finding inspiration for your website? How do you ensure your website is delivering on a visitor’s search? Let’s take a look at some tools that will help you spark up some inspiration.

Pinterest

You’ve probably used Pinterest in the past for some inspiration on decorating your home or even to plan a wedding, but it’s also a great platform for collecting ideas for a new website. If you’re unfamiliar with how Pinterest works, the process is fairly simple:

• First, you’ll want to create a board to store (or pin) images you can draw inspiration from. Multiple boards can be created to categorize different themes for your website.
• Once your boards have been created, then it’s time to start searching for inspiration. You can use the Explorer Tool to search for website ideas that are relevant to your brand. Upon finding an image that you’d like to save, you can “re-pin” it to your board, allowing you to revisit the content whenever you want.
• After you’ve selected an image to save to your board, you will have the option of adding a description to the pin. This comes in handy when you come back to a pin after some time has passed as it can provide some context.

Mood Boards

The old days of pasting magazine clippings to a wall for inspiration are long gone. With mood boards, now you can organize your thoughts all in one digital space. Also referred to as inspiration boards, mood boards are a virtual collage of ideas that can be used to enhance your website’s graphic design. Canva offers a free mood board tool that can be very helpful in establishing initial thoughts for your website and developing them into more concrete ideas. They even offer a variety of rich templates to help you get started including finer details such as textures, font styles, and color pallets.

Aside from providing a space to collect and develop all of your ideas, mood boards can also:

• Cut down on time during the design process. By using a mood board to plan out your vision for your website ahead of time, it will eliminate time spent looking at a blank web page as you try to conjure up ideas.
• Simplify collaboration. Some members of your team may be visual learners, so sharing your mood boards with them may give them a better understanding of your vision.

Customizable Website Themes

After you curate all of your ideas in Pinterest or with a mood board, you may feel ready to start building your website. But if you’re building it from scratch you may not know where to start, which can become frustrating quickly. This is where customizable website themes come in. These prebuilt themes are useful at providing a starting point for the direction you want your website to go in. Also, they are designed with performance in mind, so they are lightweight when it comes to visitor interaction.

If you’ve decided to build your website using Squarespace there are many built-in templates to choose from, or with WordPress, Astra is one of the more popular pre-designed theme options. Its fully customizable capabilities allow you to alter the webpage layout, header options, colors and text to perfectly align the chosen theme with your brand’s image.

Let the experts handle your brand’s website!

Even with all the right inspiration, building a successful website that conveys the right message to your audience is no easy feat, especially if you don’t have a background in web design. At Vela Creative Co., we recognize how critical of a role your website plays in your business’s success. That’s why our team will take the time to develop the perfect user experience, messaging, and design for your website.

We want to know more about your business and goals so we can design a website that is tailored for your needs. Connect with us today!