How to create a website from scratch in 11 steps (for beginners)

Get started by: Creating a website → | Getting a domain →

No matter what type of site you want to make, your website should represent you or your business in the best light possible. This is often easier said than done; it’s not uncommon to get burn out when building a website from scratch or using a website builder.

Fortunately, this guide will show you how to build a website from scratch while maintaining your sanity. Keep reading for expert tips on getting started, or check out our website launch checklist for additional steps on getting your site publish-ready.

Waste no time and create your site from start to finish with Wix's website builder.

Any website you create begins with a clear website goal and target audience. By identifying your niche and purpose, you can take steps towards building a site that not only looks pretty but performs as you hope it will.

Everything from your site layout to content should ladder up to your intended impact. For example, a portfolio website will naturally look different from an online store. A portfolio will include pages showcasing your work and a prominent “Contact Me” form—whereas an online store will have product pages, payment pages and maybe even print-on-demand integrations that are intended to monetize your website.

Depending on your goals, there are different types of websites that you may want to consider creating and various elements worth adding to your site:
 

Note that one site may serve multiple purposes—in which case, you'll want to be very clear about the primary goal of your site. For example, Cleverchefs' catering company uses its site to share its brand story. While the site serves to attract new bookings, its main focus is to educate existing prospects on what sets Cleverchefs apart. Since their website represents the ethos of their company so well, it has become an incredibly helpful tool in closing clients who share similar values and appreciate what they do.

Expert tip from business owner Nick Collins, founder of Cleverchefs

When I ask my clients why they chose us over our competitors, they usually say it's because of our website. I think they can really feel our passion through the way we connect with them and stand out as a creative catering company.

A website builder is a popular and affordable solution that enables you to setup, design, personalize, publish and manage a website without having to use code. The best platforms help you get a site setup and launched quicker and without fuss—while also offering 24/7 support and built-in features that make scaling easier.

Expert tip from Esin D. Habif, product marketing lead (outbound) at Wix.com

What often gets forgotten when talking about choosing a website builder is the capabilities of the infrastructure that’s promised to you—the reliability of the hosting, the level of security that’s in order to protect your visitor’s data, and of course your site's speed. Even if infrastructure is not the first thought that comes to mind when it comes to making a website, if it’s not robust enough, it can cause large headaches for website owners when trying to scale a website later on.

With the right website builder, you won’t have to deal with the mountains of minutia that other DIY site owners may face (e.g., installing security features by hand, fixing bugs on your own, etc.). Low-code-no-code software takes care of web development for you, so you don't need to know how to code to customize your site. Modern-day website builders will also include AI-powered capabilities, allowing you to work faster and smarter than ever.

That said, while there are several solid players in this website-building industry, you’ll want to make sure that you do your due diligence before investing in one. Making the wrong choice could leave you with serious regrets down the road.
 

Sign up for Wix today.

Expert tip from Esin D. Habif, product marketing lead (outbound) at Wix.com

As a creator or entrepreneur, you're often wearing multiple hats. You're designing the website, you're optimizing for SEO. This means you need a website builder that makes it easy and very learnable for you to do all of those things, on the same platform and still deliver as if working with experts in those fields.

The visual layout of your website is its most important element. You’ll want to take your time exploring your options before settling on the visual imagery and design. To get started, take a look at this database of professional website templates to see which one fits your vision best.

Whether you’re looking for portfolio templates, model portfolio examples or templates for an online store, there are dozens of customizable options to choose from. These range from simple website templates to more complex ones.

As you plan out your site, note what your competitor sites look like and check out other visual platforms, like Pinterest and Instagram. All of these examples will provide insight into what fonts, colors and web design styles and trends your audience gravitates towards. However, avoid copying what’s already been done. Rather, gain an understanding of the visual language you want to pursue and check that it resonates with your intended audience.

Expert tip from Anna Suntsov, blog and social team lead at Wix.com

The most important thing before building a website is good research. Know what you want to do and collect strong inspirations that will contribute to your design.

If the process of choosing and customizing a template feels daunting, or you simply don’t have the time, Wix’s AI website builder can simplify your work even further. Just answer a few simple questions about your goals and Wix will create a custom-made, fully functioning site for you in minutes.

The AI site builder combines our decades' worth of experience in web design with the best tech that AI has to offer. The result: a builder that not only creates a site that's appealing to your customers, but also equips you with all the web pages and widgets you need to run your business.

Try our AI website builder for free.

Your website is the face of your personal or business brand and is often the first touchpoint that people have with you, so you’ll want to make sure that it's uniquely yours. Before you get lost in the details, establish clear branding guidelines to keep your anchored. These guidelines should shape your site design—as well as the nitty-gritty details like the tone of your microcopy, your logo placement and the color of your buttons.

A great way to get started is by creating a simple idea map with a pen and paper. In the center of your map, write down the type of site you plan to make. Think about the words and phrases that describe the vibe you’re going for. Write each phrase in separate circles stemming from your initial idea.

Once you’ve broken down your brand into individual components, it will be much easier to tackle larger tasks. Reflect on this map as you design your first logo or ruminate on the right types of imagery to include on your site.

Remember, a well-designed website is visually appealing, easy to navigate and aligned with your brand identity. Taking the time to get this right can pay dividends in the long run.

From a more tactical perspective, here are several steps you’ll want to take when personalizing your site.

The use of color is not only for making your site look nice. Your color palette should align with your brand identity. Color psychology is important to take into consideration, as colors have the power to affect and evoke specific emotions and behaviors.

For example, blue has become a common color used in branding corporations and businesses, particularly in the tech field—most likely because blue is associated with stability and reliability. However, blue can also reflect sadness, hence the term “feeling blue.” Orange, for example, is generally paired with feelings of freshness and vitality. Keep in mind that the feeling correlated with a color also depends on the shade and what other colors it’s paired with. These are both important points to consider when choosing your website color scheme.

To get started, consider your website goals. Think about the vibe you want to create and the emotions you want to convey, especially if you’re starting a business. The more aligned your web design is with your overall branding, the more people are going to connect with your company and your website. And the stronger the personal connection, the more time they’ll spend on your site. This will have enormous effects on conversion rates and overall interest and engagement with your brand.

Keep in mind, choosing your color theme doesn’t mean you’re stuck with that palette forever, so try out different options and see what speaks to you. With Wix, for example, you can adjust your site’s colors at any point by clicking on the Site Design icon on the left side of your editing screen. From there, you can choose your base colors, accent colors, text colors and more.

Just like colors, typography can also play a key role in evoking feelings. When choosing the best fonts for your website, there are a number of things to consider.

First, like all other elements on your site, your font choice should match your branding. Browse different typefaces to find one that reflects your unique personality, whether you’re youthful and contemporary or have a more traditional approach.

The three primary types of fonts include:

You can also check out our article on the best fonts for websites for more details on how to choose the best one for your site.

Whatever you go for, make sure that your font is readable on both desktop and mobile devices. Remember to keep in mind Google safe fonts. Pro tip: When it comes to fonts, remember to stay consistent throughout your website. On Wix, you can easily accomplish this by going to the Site Design icon on your side panel and managing text through the Text Theme tab. That way, your content will appear uniformly across the site.

When it comes to creating a professional site that wows, the magic is often in the details. As you look to strengthen the branding on your site, don’t overlook these elements:

More tips: Learn the ins and outs of building a website using the Wix Editor with this online course.

A pretty site means nothing if it’s clunky and difficult to navigate. Before releasing your site to the world, check that your site makes it easy for visitors to find the exact pages that they’re looking for. There are several main components to bear in mind, as listed below.

Your sitemap is the blueprint of your site’s architecture. It includes all the pages and content you plan to create, so web crawlers like Google can better find and understand your pages. A sitemap typically needs updating whenever you add pages or move pages around, but systems like Wix automatically create and update your sitemap for you.

Your navigation menu guides your human visitors to the right pages on your site. It’s usually displayed as a horizontal or vertical bar on your site with links to several different pages. As a general rule of thumb, your site should be organized in a way that enables a visitor to move from one page to another in three clicks or less.

But your main menu does not—and should not have to—include all of your site pages. Link to the most important or popular pages from here, and provide an easy way for visitors to get back to where they started. (One of the best ways of achieving this is by adding a clickable logo at the top of your page that leads visitors back to the homepage.)

Check how your favorite sites design their navigation menus for inspiration. You may, for instance, want to include a mega menu that’s more visual in nature and allows users to hover over a main menu category to see subcategories of links.

Alternatively, if you’re creating a simple website with fewer pages, you can have a simple anchor menu at the top of your page that links to specific pages or specific sections on a page.

You’ll also want to spend time optimizing a mobile version of your menu to make sure everything translates clearly to phones and tablets.

To set up a menu in the Wix editor, just head to your side panel on the left side of the editor and click on “+” at the top of the panel to add an element. Then, select "Menu & Anchor" from the drop-down and choose your desired style.

Expert tip from Adi Huri, product manager at WOW for Wix.com

Keep in mind that the menu is the map of your website. By adding the right pages to your menu, in the right order, it can be the heart of your website’s success.

While your navigation menu is the primary navigation tool visitors will use to traverse your site, you can use your footer strategically to provide additional links and information. Your footer offers prime real estate to reinforce important content or show other areas of your site that your main menu doesn’t cover (think: contact information and direct links to your social media profiles).

In the Wix editor, you can easily drag and drop widgets and other elements directly into the footer. You can also easily adjust its size by dragging the border up or down.

Once you’ve mapped out what pages you want on your site, it’s time to create them. Here’s a quick step-by-step of how to do it in the Wix editor.

When designing web pages for your professional website, consider adding these pages:

Expert tip from Allison Lee, editor-in-chief at Wix.com

Blogs don’t get enough credit for their long-term advantages. In the long run, a blog can serve as a huge traffic driver and a way to connect with future customers (case in point: our Wix Blog is the first touchpoint for millions of people who may have never stumbled onto our site otherwise). That said, a blog is a long-term commitment—it requires a well thought-out strategy and consistent maintenance.

As people interact with your website, you'll want to make sure you're grabbing their attention and keeping it. The best way to do this is by optimizing and diversifying how you relay information.

Start by thinking about the various types of content you can host on your website. There's text, photography, videos, animation and so much more. Once you have a grasp on all of your options, it’s time to decide how to organize it.

Consider your content hierarchy

For your visitors to feel comfortable and at home while browsing, it’s important to keep your site as organized as possible. Think about hierarchy here: you’ll want your most eye-catching and important content to be placed above the fold (in other words, the area that’s visible on your website without visitors having to scroll).

Expert top tip from Amanda Weiner, CRO expert at Wix.com

Site hierarchy and the information you provide your visitors with is more than just how your site looks. This will also directly impact how many visitors ultimately buy your products. You’ll want to be clear about your offerings through your content, your visuals and your buttons right from the get go to ensure visitors recognize your value right away.

Furthermore, take note that some of your readers are only skimming your content. To make their lives easier and to make your content stand out, consider how you can optimize your design so your audience can get the most out of your content.
 

To do so, consider which written information can be made more digestible and visual with the use of media features (videos, images and animations, infographics for example). Make certain headers and other important bits of information stand out more than others by opting for a larger font or a bright color that contrasts with the background.

Looking to create content for your website? Consider using AI tools to speed up the process for you. Read all about Wix's next steps on AI text generation for websites and AI website creation. Or, get started by understanding more about how to build a website with AI.

Consider SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of optimizing your site so your pages can rank higher on search engine result pages. When launching a new website from scratch, it’s vital to set your site up for success so it can be found by Google. The more exposure you get, the more likely it is for prospective clients to find your site and book your services, buy your products or read your blog.

Expert tip from Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix.com

Leveraging SEO and integrating it into the website creation process is vital. Various studies have shown that organic search is the single greatest provider of traffic to websites - with that being even more pronounced within the B2B context. To that, traffic from organic search, when done correctly is essentially built to last (with proper maintenance over time, of course) and forms a crucial part of a site’s long-term growth.

Enhancing your website's visibility on search engines like Google is essential for driving organic traffic to your pages. Fortunately, every Wix site starts out with a solid infrastructure that already exceeds the needs of search engines, giving you a strong SEO foundation in organic search. From there, Wix SEO tools make it easy for you to optimize your reach even further. Capabilities include:
 

You’ll also have the ability to utilize additional SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush.

Consider the mobile experience

As you build your site, keep in mind that a significant amount of consumers will be visiting your site from their smartphones. In fact, as of April 2021, over 50% of internet use comes from cell phones and tablets. It’s because of this that Google established mobile-first indexing, a system in which the search engine predominantly determines website ranking based on mobile websites, not desktop.

As mobile web surfing becomes even more entrenched in our culture, it’s essential to invest time in mobile features as well as design to provide a smooth, intuitive user experience for those smaller screens. Whatever website creation platform you choose, make sure it has a mobile editor and the ability to adjust elements for mobile without it affecting the desktop version. You’ll also want a website builder that prioritizes performance and site speed. For example, Wix deploys performance-friendly website infrastructure, such as cache and lazy loading, to ensure faster sites.

Once you're done with your site and happy with it, you may want to consider making your website an app as well.

Learn more: How to make a website mobile-friendly

Now comes one of the most exciting parts of making a website—choosing a domain name.

Your domain is like your website’s address and permanent home on the web. When an internet user enters your domain name, or website URL into a web browser, it connects with a web server who identifies your domain by its IP address and then delivers your site to the user. This process is also referred to as a Domain Name System.

Choosing a domain name doesn’t need to be too complex. While your name needs to be memorable and unique, domains (top-level domains) and subdomains typically include the name of your website and/or the name of your business followed by an extension like .com or .org. If you are struggling to come up with the perfect name for your business, try a website name generator to help get the ball rolling.

All domain names must be registered with a domain name registrar or registry, where the owners of any domain name can be searched and found.

You'll also need to consider what domain extension you want to use:

Website creators like Wix offer free domain names with a premium website building plan. This is advantageous because it will improve your website’s credibility to both people and search engines. It will show visitors that you’re a professional, trusted brand and allows people to find you more easily online.

After choosing a domain name, you'll next need to consider your web hosting service options. From shared hosting to cloud hosting, there are several different hosted services to choose from. Wix sites all come with reliable and secure hosting for high uptime on all user sites.

Learn more: Website name ideas

Building a website from scratch can be an exciting journey, but rushing through the process is a common pitfall. In an eagerness to go live, many often overlook critical elements, potentially harming their website's performance and user experience. Avoid this situation. Make sure to dot your Is and cross your Ts before publishing. Here are some key tips to help you out:

Once your website is live, you need to let people know about it. You can promote your website through social media, email marketing, guest blogging or outreach marketing. Effective promotion ensures that your website reaches the right people and delivers the desired outcomes—whether you’re aiming to increase traffic, engagement or sales.

Expert tip from Lilach Goldis, social media marketing manager at Wix.com

Identify the social media platforms your audience is active on the most and get an in-depth understanding of what it takes to rank in them. For example, converting your Instagram carousel posts into a Reel can capture attention more effectively and boost your content's impact, ultimately leading people to visit your site.

 Here are some ways Wix can help you get your site out there:

Much like a work of art, a website is never truly "finished." It's an ever-evolving entity that demands regular attention to maintain peak performance.

One of the primary advantages of using a website builder to create your site is that you can easily make additions and changes as needed in real time. By following these best practices, you can maintain a site that not only survives—but thrives—in the competitive digital landscape.

Making or designing a website with AI involves using artificial intelligence tools and services to enhance different aspects of your site, such as design, content creation or user interaction.

Take Wix ADI, for example. Launched back in 2016, it gives every Wix user the option of creating a website in mere minutes by simply providing some upfront information about what your site should include. "Wix ADI offers smarter AI tools deeper down in the journey, like personal recommendations and business growth tools,” says Marine Levy Belder, a product marketing manager at Wix.

Wix ADI serves as the foundation for Wix's AI website builder—an even more powerful way to create a site that’s tailor-made for you. Learn more about Wix's ever-evolving AI capabilities in this letter from our CEO, Avishai Abrahami.

Be inspired by these websites made with AI via Wix ADI:

When it comes to learning web development and creating a website from scratch, you have a few main options to explore.

Streamline the process of creating your website with Wix's website builder.