Want to build your own website, or are you looking to become a Pro Designer?

Back when I started coaching people on building their own websites, I made all the classic assumptions. “Oh, I’ve taught web designers, how different can it be?” As it turns out, rather a lot. When you coach trained designers, you’re picking them up from a well-marked subway station: they already know their way around the lines and where the stops are. But shift the audience, and suddenly you’ve got commuters appearing from all sorts of entrances, each thinking they’re on the right line, clutching wildly different maps. At that point, I realised there is no single starting point in web design. Everyone hops on the Underground from their own station.

So, whether you’re staring down your first Squarespace site, dreaming of going full freelance, or eyeing up professional web design as a career, you’ll want a sense of where you are on the map. Just as important, you want to avoid ending up lost in the sidings or waiting at the wrong platform for a train that will never come.

Consider this your digital Oyster card. Let’s help you find your station and plot your course.

Why This Matters

Let’s be honest: the world doesn’t need another abandoned website, doomed to linger forever with “Coming Soon” plastered across the homepage. That’s exactly what happens when people jump into web design without knowing their true starting point. It costs time (weeks you’ll never see again), money (subscriptions, expensive stock images, hiring or firing the wrong help), and ultimately, motivation.

If you’re a marketer with a decent eye for content but zero patience for fiddly layouts, you might find yourself going round in circles, getting no closer to launch. Or maybe you’re a seasoned graphic designer whose hard drive is jammed with gorgeous PDFs, but the idea of hosting a live website leaves you twitching.

The most frustrating part is that when you can’t see where you are on the line, it’s easy to get bogged down, waste energy solving the wrong problems, and feel like web design is “not for people like me.” In reality, it is possible for you, but not if you’re riding the wrong train.

Common Pitfalls

A few of the most popular ways people manage to derail their own progress:

1. Assuming everyone starts at the same place.
   The most persistent myth. All it guarantees is that you’ll be working to someone else’s timetable, not your own.

2. Chasing the wrong skills first.
   Do you really need to learn to code to build a scrappy little business site, or are you skipping the boring stations for the shiny high-speed express only to find it doesn’t stop where you need it?

3. Jumping platforms (tools) at every frustration.
   Today it’s Wix, tomorrow it’s WordPress, next week you’re wading through Wix again, cursing.

4. Ignoring your own transferable skills.
   Maybe your time spent wrangling Excel or project management in your past life could give you a real leg-up. Not spotting this means you’ll double your workload.

5. Going it alone.
   Web design can be a solitary sport, but when it comes to picking up real expertise, it helps to be part of a team.

And, of course, forgetting the all-important first question: “Where the heck am I starting from?”

Step-by-Step Fix

Let’s break it down into practical steps, using a few familiar faces as our travelling companions. Maybe you’ll spot yourself among them.

Step 1: Pinpoint Your Station (Assess Your Background)

First up, get brutally honest. Are you:

• A total newcomer (Career-Change Colin type), fresh out of a job where the biggest creative decision was what to put in your sandwich?
• A DIY jack-of-all-trades, having already cobbled together a couple of family sites, but keen to stop them all looking “a bit council leaflet”?
• An ex-agency marketer, used to talking about SEO and social but with the clicking speed of your average housecat?
• A graphic designer, accomplished with colour but allergic to technical jargon?
• Already on the tracks as a developer or designer, just keen to sharpen up?

Meet Career-Change Colin:
Colin traded PowerPoint decks and long commutes for a home office and the smell of fresh coffee. He’s built spreadsheets before but wants more creative control over what he does (and where he does it from). He knows the difference between Chrome and Firefox, but not much else.

Or, take Freelance Fiona:
Fiona’s business cards are beautiful, her print portfolios even more so, but she’s never launched a client website herself. It all seems “a bit technical.”

Step 2: Choose the Right Line (Pick Your Main Tool or Route)

If you’re new, don’t try to design a racing yacht when you can be thriving on something with training wheels. The web offers a huge array of tools. You don’t need to master them all. Choose the platform that fits where you’re starting from, not the one everyone on Twitter is shouting about this week.

Colin benefits from Squarespace:
He doesn’t have to install anything. No code. Just sign up, pick a template, and start typing. Even the most enthusiastic Mac user will struggle to break Squarespace, which is a blessing in disguise.

Meanwhile, DIY Colin (six months later) is poking around with Hostinger, Wix, and thinking about “self-hosted” WordPress. Tempting, but only if you’re genuinely ready for complexity or love problem solving.

For Fiona, Squarespace lets her use her eye for layout and colour, without needing a crash course in HTML.

Step 3: Set Up Milestones (Don’t Aim for the End Station Yet)

Most people want to see the finished website the same week they start. Don’t. If you treat the journey as a series of baby steps (with well-earned snacks at each platform), you’ll see results faster.

Marketers:
Don’t fixate on becoming a design expert; aim first to re-skin one template to match your brand colours. Celebrate that. Then move to adjusting fonts, then layout tweaks.

Designers:
Set a specific creative experiment with each build. Try a ludicrous colour palette just to see what happens. Push the templates to their limit.

Career-Changers:
Get your first site up. Yes, even if it makes you wince a bit. Public embarrassment is underrated as a powerful motivator to keep improving.

Developers:
Add one “design-only” feature on each project—spend a day making a button that actually looks inviting, instead of shouting “I was coded in 2008.”

Step 4: Take the Right Support Train (Join the Community That Fits)

Nobody builds a thousand sites alone, not even grizzled old-timers (hello). If you try, you’ll end up talking to yourself (and your dog will have no idea what CSS means anyway). The best thing I ever did was surround myself with people who knew different things to me.

At Pixelhaze, the line splits into two main branches:

• DIY Community:
  Perfect for those tinkering with builder platforms, eager to stop making rookie mistakes or looking for feedback on their client projects. It’s where DIY Colin hangs out, along with all the other patient souls working things out brick by virtual brick.

• Coaching Community:
  More focused support, including weekly coaching sessions where I’ll help you untangle your trickiest design knots, live and in real time. That’s where people like Fiona, and more advanced hands, jump on.

Step 5: Commit to Keep Travelling (Keep Pushing Past Your Comfort Zone)

The most dedicated web designers I know never treat the journey as finished. They keep trying odd detours and pausing at unfamiliar stations, even if just for the view. Even after decades of work, there’s always a new tool or trick to master.

Some designers, after 75 or 100 sites, think they’ve seen it all. That’s when the rut sneaks in. Experiment, volunteer for an outlandish project, or teach someone else just for the kick of seeing your bad habits in someone new.

What Most People Miss

Most people don’t like to admit that it’s never a straight line. You’ll hop off your original platform, try a different route, maybe circle back to basics after a stumble. Like the Underground at rush hour, everyone looks like they know exactly where they’re going, but plenty are winging it, sweat patches and all.

The real separation between the career-changers who thrive, marketers who transition, and designers who stagnate comes from learning to enjoy the journey, trusting that the next station eventually gets easier to find.

The Bigger Picture

Sort out your starting point now, and you do yourself three massive favours:

1. You stay motivated.
   Nothing keeps you going like seeing progress at your own pace, rather than ticking off arbitrary milestones someone else invented.

2. You save a fortune.
   Fewer dead-end tools, less “professional help” just to untangle your messes, and far less expensive procrastination.

3. You build real flexibility.
   Next time the “web platform of the month” rolls in, you’ll know why (and when) to jump aboard, or decide against it.

Web design, when done right, pays off far beyond the visible stuff. Your first little portfolio project could turn into a full-on career pivot. That flaky DIY business venture could be the spark for something world-changing. You might also end up with a sharp-looking personal site and a hobby you’re proud of. You decide which line you want to ride.

Wrap-Up

If I’ve learned anything after building thousands of sites and helping others do the same, it’s this: figuring out your starting point is less about admitting what you don’t know, and more about capitalising on the skills you already have. Then, step by step, finding your next stop with others on the journey.

Whether you’re Colin searching for his first client, Fiona wrestling with her first responsive grid, or even hoping to make your tenth site look different from the last nine, you’ll progress faster by mapping out your route and asking plenty of daft questions along the way.

Ready to plot your personal Underground route through web design? We’re here for all stages of the journey, no matter where you hop on.

Want more helpful systems like this? Join Pixelhaze Academy for free at https://www.pixelhaze.academy/membership.

Elwyn Davies is a web designer, front-end developer, and reluctant generalist who has built more than 3,000 websites in his time. He’s almost certainly overcaffeinated. When not coaching the next generation of designers at Pixelhaze Academy, he can usually be found reminiscing about the days when Dreamweaver crashed more often than it saved.