Introduction
Having a personal website is more important than ever in today's digital age. Your site is often the first impression you give potential employers, clients, partners, and community members. An amazing personal website allows you to showcase your work, personality, and talents in one centralized place online.
However, designing an effective personal website takes more than just throwing together a basic page. You need to thoughtfully plan the purpose, structure, visuals, and content to craft a site that represents you in the best light. Using research-backed best practices for site hierarchy, typography, conversion optimization, and branding will help you create a personal website that leaves a lasting impact on your audience.
In this article, we’ll walk through essential tips from web design experts to help you develop the best personal website that aligns with your goals. You’ll learn how to:
- Plan your site's purpose and content strategy
- Optimize layout and visual hierarchy
- Style your site with colors, fonts, and branding
- Continuously improve your live site based on data
Let's dive in!
Planning Your Site's Purpose and Goals
The first step to designing your best personal website is to clearly define its purpose and your goals. Determine who your target audience is, what you want them to do on the site, and what mix of content will convince them to take those actions.
Some elements to think through in your planning process include:
- The specific demographics and interests of your target audience
- Key information or work samples you want to feature
- Desired visitor actions like newsletter signups or contact requests
- What unique value you provide vs. competitors/alternatives
- Measurable goals like traffic, leads, or engagement metrics
Conducting thorough competitor research gives you an outsider’s perspective on what personal sites in your field are doing well. Look for opportunities where your site could provide something missing or underserved. Tools like Unicorn Platform's competitor analysis features allow you to easily benchmark competitor sites.
Determining the right balance of text, visuals, and multimedia for your audience and industry is also key. A portfolio site should showcase relevant work samples, while a consultant’s site may feature in-depth written content like case studies. Including customer testimonials and success stories builds trust and social proof. SaaS companies like Segment effectively showcase customer stories on their sites. Think through the ideal content mix that provides value and aligns with conversion goals.
Creating an editorial calendar of blog topics and content ideas helps produce assets tailored to user interests. Develop a streamlined process for regularly creating and optimizing website content.
Perform Competitor Research
- Analyze designs, content types, and features competitors use
- Identify gaps where your site could stand out or improve upon others
- Use tools like Unicorn Platform to benchmark competitor's traffic, social proof, SEO rankings
- Draw inspiration but avoid completely imitating their approach
- Put your unique spin on effective strategies you discover
Determine Your Content Mix
- Evaluate ideal media formats and subjects for your audience
- Showcase relevant work samples and skills
- Create value-driven content like blogs, videos, case studies
- Find the balance between text, images, multimedia
- Develop and promote content aligned with your goals
Optimizing Site Layout and Structure
In addition to planning your content, optimizing the structure and layout is crucial for engagement and usability. Organize your site in a way that makes scanning and digging in intuitive based on user priorities.
Place important information like your services, testimonials, and calls-to-action (CTAs) higher up on pages. Break up long pages with clear headers, useful sidebars, and negative space. Unicorn Platform's flexible layout tools help design the optimal site architecture for conversions.
Focus On Visual Hierarchy
- Direct attention with size contrasts, color, negative space
- Make CTAs prominent through size, colors, placement
- Use techniques like larger headers, bolding, dividers
- Guide visitors down the page with sharp hierarchy
- Communicate importance through visual weight
Mobile-First, Fully Responsive Design
- Optimize for smaller screens first before enhancing for desktop
- Use flexible containers, text sizes, and responsive elements
- Ensure site looks and functions great on every device
- Avoid horizontal scrolling or tiny links on mobile
- Leverage Unicorn Platform's responsive breakpoints and tools
Styling Your Site With Colors and Typography
The colors, fonts, and styles you choose dramatically impact the look, feel, and personality of your site. Selecting the right color palette can elicit specific emotional responses from your audience. Combining complementary fonts makes your content easy to digest.
Limit your palette to two or three accent colors for a clean, sophisticated look. Use white space and dividers to add visual interest. Test different font pairings like pairing a serif and sans-serif. Maintain cohesive visual branding that reflects your vibe rather than default system fonts.
Establishing a Visual Brand
- Use color and fonts to create branding that reflects you
- Align visual identity with your brand persona
- Make small tweaks to typography, logo, etc. to stand out
- Reinforce brand through site UX, messaging, assets
- Remain consistent across platforms for recognition
Choosing the Right Color Palette
- Pick colors that align with your desired mood and tone
- Ensure enough contrast between text and background
- Use online tools to experiment with combinations
- Verify palette looks good on various screens
- Adjust saturation and lightness as needed
Optimizing and Testing Your Live Site
The work doesn't stop once your site is live. Continuously monitor metrics to identify opportunities for improvement. Use A/B testing to experiment with versions of key elements like CTAs, page layouts, and content sections.
Check site speed regularly and optimize images, enable caching, and fix technical problems causing slowdowns. Reducing image file sizes using compression tools can provide a quick speed boost. Unicorn Platform offers built-in image optimization. Promoting through search, social, email, and partnerships is also crucial to drive traffic and expand reach.
Improving Site Speed and Performance
- Faster sites have better SEO, engagement, conversions
- Optimize images, minify CSS/JS, enable caching
- Reduce server response times as much as possible
- Fix excessive redirects, broken links, errors
- Consider a CDN like Unicorn Platform for faster distribution
Promoting Your Site Effectively
- Build organic reach through SEO, content marketing
- Leverage social media, email, partnerships
- Make sharing easy with social buttons, embeds
- Run occasional targeted paid ads if budget allows
- Analyze traffic sources to focus on most effective
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Creating your best personal website requires identifying your goals, carefully planning content, and optimizing the structure and visual presentation. Maintain a consistent brand through color palette, fonts, and styles that reflect you.
Focus on site speed and conversions using analytics tools and testing. Promote your site through a mix of organic and paid channels. Keep improving your website based on data and user feedback.
An amazing personal site clearly showcases your skills, personality and differentiates you from alternatives. With Unicorn Platform's AI-powered features and templates, even non-coders can easily build incredible personal sites. With these pro tips, you can design a personal website that leaves a lasting positive impression on your audience.
If you're looking to create a stunning personal website, be sure to check out Unicorn Platform and its easy drag-and-drop builder tailored for SaaS founders and startups.
