Web design guide for brands

Start with the goal, not the design

Before choosing colors, define what the website has to achieve: sell online, get inquiries, show authority or reduce repeated calls. Each goal changes the structure, the content and what gets measured.

Write the goal in one sentence along with a metric that confirms it. For example: “20 qualified inquiries a month” or “half of sales happen online”.

Architecture: which pages you need

Most brands need fewer pages than they think. A services site is usually covered by a home page, one page per service, pricing, about, contact and a blog or library if you're going to publish.

Each page answers a customer's question. If you can't write that question, the page isn't needed.

Visual identity: recognizable without the logo

• A short palette with clear roles: background, text, accent and state.
• Two typefaces at most, with a defined scale.
• Your own photography treatment: consistent light, framing and color.
• A distinctive visual element: a character, a shape or a recognizable animation style.

Motion with judgment

Animation has to explain something: hierarchy, continuity between sections or the result of an action. One dominant animation per screen is enough. Everything must work with the reduced-motion preference.

Copy: first what the customer wants to know

Accessibility and speed

• Minimum contrast of 4.5:1 for normal text (WCAG 2.2, level AA).
• Everything can be used with a keyboard and has visible focus.
• Images in lightweight formats and with alt text.
• Nothing important depends on a script that doesn't load.

SEO and AI assistants from day one

Prepare clear titles, descriptions, internal links and accessible content. Use structured data where appropriate and enable crawling. These practices help, but do not guarantee citations or rankings.

After launch

Measure the goal metric every month, check which pages aren't doing their job and update the content with a visible date. A website that isn't reviewed ages faster than the brand.