How to Do Web Design

Web design is a practice—a series of activities that, executed well, produce effective websites. It's not a single skill but a combination of research, strategy, creativity, and technical understanding applied through a structured process. Knowing the individual skills involved in web design matters, but knowing how to combine them into an effective practice matters more. This is the difference between knowing design principles and actually being able to design.

The process of doing web design varies by project scope, team structure, and individual working style, but certain stages appear consistently across successful approaches. Understanding requirements precedes creating solutions. Planning structures work before aesthetic decisions. Iteration refines initial ideas toward finished designs. This fundamental shape adapts to different contexts without losing its essential logic.

This guide walks through the complete process of doing web design: from initial project understanding through research and planning, through design creation and iteration, to handoff and implementation support. Whether you're designing your first site or refining your approach after years of practice, understanding the full process helps you work more effectively.

Let's follow a project from beginning to end.

Understanding the Project

Every design project starts with understanding what needs to be created and why. This understanding phase is often rushed—there's pressure to start designing—but inadequate understanding leads to solutions that don't fit the actual problem. Time invested in understanding pays dividends throughout the project.

Client or stakeholder conversations reveal business context, goals, and constraints. What is this website supposed to accomplish? Who makes decisions about it? What are the non-negotiables and preferences? What budget and timeline exist? These conversations establish the parameters within which you'll work. Misalignment discovered later is expensive; alignment established early prevents wasted effort.

User understanding determines who you're designing for and what they need. Who will use this site? What are they trying to accomplish? What do they need to know or do? User research—interviews, surveys, analytics analysis, persona development—provides this understanding. Assumptions about users are frequently wrong; actual research grounds design decisions in reality.

Content understanding addresses what substance the site will contain. What content exists currently? What needs to be created? What content types and volumes should the design accommodate? Designing without understanding content leads to layouts that can't hold actual content effectively.

Document your understanding in a brief or similar artifact that captures what you've learned. This document becomes a reference point throughout the project—when questions arise or disagreements emerge, return to the documented understanding to ground decisions.

Research and Analysis

With project context understood, research expands your knowledge of the landscape within which you're designing.

Competitive analysis examines what similar sites are doing. How do competitors approach the same problems? What works well? What doesn't? Competitive analysis isn't about copying but about understanding context. Users bring expectations from other sites; understanding those expectations helps you meet or strategically exceed them.

Design research gathers inspiration and references relevant to this project's aesthetic direction. What visual styles might be appropriate? What interaction patterns might apply? What examples from other industries or contexts might inspire solutions? Collecting references builds a palette of possibilities before committing to specific directions.

Technical research identifies capabilities and constraints. What platform will the site be built on? What technical limitations apply? What development resources are available? Technical reality constrains what designs can be implemented; understanding constraints early prevents designing solutions that can't be built.

Synthesis transforms raw research into actionable insights. What patterns emerge? What opportunities appear? What constraints are clear? This synthesis bridges research and design, translating what you've learned into guidance for what you'll create.

Information Architecture and Structure

Before visual design, determine the site's structure—what content exists, how it's organized, and how users navigate between sections.

Sitemap creation defines what pages exist and how they relate hierarchically. The sitemap provides the skeleton that flesh (content) and skin (visual design) will attach to. Creating sitemaps requires balancing organizational logic (how the business thinks about content) with user logic (how visitors will seek information).

Navigation design determines how users move through the site. What appears in primary navigation? How are subpages accessed? What secondary navigation exists? Navigation should feel intuitive—users should be able to predict what they'll find before clicking. Testing navigation structure with real users validates or challenges your assumptions.

Wireframing creates low-fidelity representations of page layouts, showing content placement and structure without visual styling. Wireframes let stakeholders react to structure before aesthetics distract attention. They're faster to create and modify than full designs, making them ideal for exploring alternatives and incorporating feedback.

Review and approval of information architecture should happen before visual design begins. Changes to structure after visual design has started are expensive; changes to structure before visual design begins are cheap.

Visual Design

With structure established, visual design creates the aesthetic experience—the look, feel, and personality that users will encounter.

Style exploration establishes visual direction before committing to specific page designs. Mood boards, style tiles, or initial concepts explore different aesthetic possibilities. Presenting options at this stage lets stakeholders react to broad directions before detailed work is invested. Reaching agreement on direction prevents the frustrating experience of completing detailed designs only to learn stakeholders wanted a different feel.

Page design applies the established direction to actual page layouts. Key pages—homepage, major landing pages, critical interior pages—get designed in full fidelity, showing exactly what they'll look like when built. These designs should demonstrate how the visual system works across different page types and content scenarios.

Design system documentation captures decisions for consistent implementation. Colors, typography scales, spacing systems, component patterns, interaction states—everything developers need to implement consistently should be documented. Design systems ensure coherence during development and as sites evolve over time.

Responsive design addresses how layouts adapt across screen sizes. Desktop designs alone are insufficient; designs must show how pages work at mobile and tablet widths. Planning responsive behavior during design prevents improvisation during development.

Presentation and Feedback

Designs don't emerge fully formed; they develop through cycles of presentation, feedback, and revision. Managing this feedback process effectively is a core design skill.

Presenting designs to stakeholders requires more than just showing mockups. Explain the reasoning behind decisions. Connect design choices to project goals and user needs. Help stakeholders evaluate designs against objectives rather than just personal taste. Presentation that educates stakeholders leads to better feedback.

Gathering feedback requires creating space for honest reactions while guiding feedback toward useful directions. Ask specific questions: Does this hierarchy feel right for our priorities? Does this navigation match how you think about the content? Does this visual direction align with the brand? Specific questions produce more useful feedback than "what do you think?"

Processing feedback distinguishes between feedback about fundamental issues (which require significant revision), feedback about preferences that don't affect effectiveness (which may or may not warrant changes), and feedback that reflects misunderstanding (which requires clarification, not design changes). Not all feedback is equal; discernment in processing feedback prevents thrashing between contradictory directions.

Revision cycles incorporate feedback into improved designs. Each cycle should bring the design closer to final; if cycles seem to be circling without progressing, something in the process needs to change. Clear decision criteria help converge toward approval rather than endless iteration.

Prototype and Validate

Static designs show appearance but not behavior. Prototyping and validation test how designs actually work.

Prototyping creates interactive representations that simulate how the finished site will function. Users can click through, experiencing navigation and key interactions. Prototyping reveals issues that static mockups hide: flows that seem logical in theory but confuse users in practice, interactions that don't work as expected, transitions that feel jarring.

User testing validates designs with actual users or representative testers. Watching users attempt real tasks reveals usability issues that even careful review misses. Testing throughout the design process—not just at the end—catches problems when they're still easy to fix.

Stakeholder testing ensures designs work for internal users and reviewers. Stakeholders using prototypes to imagine their content and scenarios often catch issues they missed in static review. This validation builds confidence before development investment.

Iteration based on testing findings improves designs before handoff. Some issues may be deferred post-launch, but fundamental usability problems should be addressed in design rather than discovered after launch.

Handoff and Support

Finished designs must be communicated to developers clearly enough that implementation matches intent.

Design handoff packages designs with all necessary specifications. Modern tools like Figma provide inspection modes that let developers extract measurements, colors, and assets directly. Supplementing tool-based inspection with explicit documentation of interactions, responsive behavior, and edge cases ensures developers understand intent beyond what mockups literally show.

Asset delivery provides all files developers need: images properly sized and compressed, icons in appropriate formats, any custom fonts or graphics. Clear file organization and naming prevents confusion about which assets to use where.

Development collaboration continues after initial handoff. Questions arise during implementation. Edge cases not addressed in designs need decisions. Problems with implementation need resolution. Remaining available to support development—answering questions, providing clarification, reviewing implementation—ensures the finished site matches design intent.

Quality assurance at the end of development verifies that implementation matches design. This isn't just checking for bugs but confirming that spacing, typography, colors, and interactions match specifications. Catching deviations before launch is far easier than fixing them after.

Conclusion

Doing web design means executing a process that spans understanding, research, structure, visual design, feedback, validation, and handoff. Each phase has its purpose and produces outputs that enable subsequent phases. Skipping phases or executing them poorly creates problems that surface later at greater cost.

The process adapts to different project scales and contexts. Large projects may spend weeks on each phase with extensive documentation. Small projects might move through phases quickly with lighter-weight artifacts. But the fundamental sequence—understand before designing, structure before styling, iterate based on feedback, validate before launching—applies regardless of scale.

For your own practice, evaluate how your current approach maps to this process. Are you understanding requirements thoroughly before designing? Are you establishing structure before aesthetics? Are you gathering and processing feedback effectively? Are you supporting implementation through completion? Strengthening any weak phases in your process improves everything you produce.