Few things are as exciting, stressful, or truly fulfilling as starting your own business, and one of the most exciting milestones on that journey is purchasing your very own domain, creating your business website and introducing your products to the world.

Thanks to an abundance of website builders like Wix and WordPress, a workable website is within your grasp no matter your level of experience. But before building a website, it’s important to take into account the type of experience you want your customers to have (their user experience, or UX).

Your website will no doubt go through upgrades and updates as your business grows, but before launching your initial site, following a few simple design tips can make for an impressive launch.

Before the exciting part of picking colors and fonts comes the boring part of visiting countless competitor and similar websites. Check out local competitors and international corporations; try to get familiar with websites that make navigation easy, and those that make you work too hard to find information. This research phase will help you identify your favorite types of website layouts, and get a feel for the best design to fit your business.

Just remember, the research phase can last for as long as you want it to, which can be a blessing and a curse. You may never feel 100 percent ready, so set a deadline for yourself to make your website live. Yes, mistakes might be made, but going live is the best way to move forward and really let your website begin to evolve.

What is the point of your website? Is it to get people to sign up for your weekly newsletter, hit the “buy” button, or request a quote?

Whatever the point is, you have to give visitors to your site a clear path to completing this task. You may have heard the term “Call to Action” when learning about website design, and this simply means to make that action as clear as possible. Literally creating a button on your website that says “Sign Up for Our Newsletter!” is both the simplest and most effective way to achieve this.

There’s nothing so comforting as a “home” button, visible on every page of your website. Remember, not all of your users are of the same experience level, and a simple rule of thumb to appeal to all users is to keep your website as simple as possible.

This means that navigation bars that utilize more common terms like “case studies” might work better than fun euphemisms like “talk of the town.” It’s tempting to try to out-creative your competitors, but keeping it simple in the beginning will help you attract more new customers.