Designing a website involves 6 key steps: defining your goal, planning your pages, choosing your build method (HTML, WordPress, Canva, or hiring a professional), designing for mobile first, adding content, and launching. The fastest way to get a professional result in South Africa is to let Emmerweb design your free demo in 48 hours.
What should the website do? Generate leads? Sell products? Display your menu? The goal determines every design decision.
Decide which pages you need: Home, About, Services, Gallery, Contact. Map out the navigation structure before designing anything.
DIY tools (Canva, WordPress), AI builders, or a professional designer (Emmerweb). Each has different costs, quality levels, and time requirements.
Over 70% of SA users are on mobile. Design the mobile view first, then adapt for desktop — not the other way around.
Write clear, benefit-focused copy. Add professional photos of your business or products. Include your contact details prominently.
Compress images, test all links, check mobile layout, set up a Google Business profile, and publish your site.
Compare the five main methods for designing a website in South Africa:
✓ Pros
Full control, fastest performance, no monthly platform fees
✗ Cons
Requires coding knowledge, time-intensive, maintenance burden
Best For
Developers, highly custom projects
✓ Pros
Flexible, large plugin library, good SEO capabilities
✗ Cons
Can become bloated, security maintenance required, plugins conflict
Best For
Blogs, content-heavy sites, WooCommerce stores
✓ Pros
Industry-standard design tool, excellent for prototyping and handoff
✗ Cons
Design tool only — you still need development to build the actual site
Best For
Designing mockups before development, UI/UX professionals
✓ Pros
Very easy, no coding, nice templates, good for simple sites
✗ Cons
Limited functionality, not ideal for SEO, generic look
Best For
Landing pages, portfolios, very simple business sites
✓ Pros
Professional quality, 48-hour delivery, free demo, free marketing video, SA-specific
✗ Cons
You're not building it yourself (which is actually a benefit!)
Best For
Any South African business that wants a professional result fast
Figma is the industry-standard design tool used by professional web designers. It's used to create visual mockups and prototypes before any code is written. Here's how professionals use Figma to design a website:
Set up frames
Create frames at standard widths: 375px (mobile), 768px (tablet), 1440px (desktop).
Define design tokens
Set up your colour styles, typography styles, and spacing units so the design is consistent throughout.
Design components
Build reusable components for navbars, buttons, cards, and footers — keeping the design consistent and efficient.
Create page layouts
Use Auto Layout and grid constraints to create flexible layouts that can adapt to different content.
Prototype interactions
Link frames together to simulate the user journey and test navigation before handing to developers.
Hand off to development
Use Figma's Dev Mode to share exact specs, colours, fonts, and spacing with developers.
Emmerweb uses professional design tools (including Figma) to create your website — so you don't have to learn any of this yourself. View our services →