Web design system

A guide to designing your web pages for consistency, scalability, and collaboration

Landing page design system elements including color codes, photos, buttons, layouts, and code snippets.

A web page takes many different forms. The homepage, landing page, product page, blog post, etc. Each page serves a very specific purpose for the user, and is among other pages that make up a website. A design system is a set of patterns and components that help your team streamline your content production. It helps solve the following problems:

This guide is broken down into three aspects: design, content, and sharing with your team.

Design using components

At the core of a design system are components that are based on the design patterns for your website's design. Colors, spacing, typography, etc. Each component provides a format to ensure brand guidelines are followed and the user experience is consistent.

Breaking components down

Use this hierarchy and introduce it to your team as you design and build your templates.

  • Content pieces in an email template Content
    Text areas and content images accompanying text; what's found within HTML elements
  • Components in an email template Components
    Standalone elements like buttons that work in various contexts and serve specific functions
  • Layouts in an email template Regions
    Repeated groups of content and components, usually in columns, like a listing of content items
  • Sections in an email template Sections
    Stackable containers between the header and footer that serve to create an overall layout

Don't make it too rigid

A design system shouldn’t feel like something that stifles creativity. Don't make it too rigid, a certain level of hand-crafting is important. It should allow for greater creativity within a set of guidelines. The long-term benefit is that a designer can take greater care and give better thought to solving each solution instead of rushing to put together something that comes along.

Example web page

The elements of a good landing page, using components in a design system.

Web page template example
Web page template mobile example

Creating a component

A good component is

  • Purposeful - all components solve a specific problem
  • Reusable - components work for multiple use cases
  • Flexible - they work in many different contexts

Naming things

Language creates a shared understanding and alignment. During the process of figuring out the components your team needs, start developing an approach to naming them. Your naming conventions, also called tokens, will be used as titles for your component design and turn into variables for your code.

As discussions are had, pay attention to how components are naturally described. Use token names as you revise design concepts and factor design and code for your components and see what sticks to use in your final resources.

Your tokens may be composed of different parts based on the type of the component and the hierarchy they are a part of. They may each also have different variants and values.

Components output

When designing for a web browser, HTML is the protocol for producing a page. Your source of truth should be an HTML file with your components in HTML and CSS code, along with any needed Javascript snippets for added functionality. This format acts as a bridge between the visual design and the backend architecture or CMS setup for your design system.

Improving your dev workflow

Form fields

For designing and coding a form, keep in mind modern browser capabilities. Added functionality and styling options have been built in to make it easier to implement and customize fields:

Focus on content

The most important part of any campaign is the message it's communicating, the text itself. Your design system should include some guidelines around how content is produced.

Writing guidelines

Use these general tips to develop the rules around your writing approach:

Best practices

Skimmable content

Feature sections

Feature sections on a page highlight ideas in shorter form content and usually include a call-to-action, or links to further explore each key idea.

Listings

Essentially a group of related items that offer an easier way for users to browse through collections that may otherwise be overwhelming to go through.

Article content

Breaking up content for blog posts and other types of articles (eg: help docs), making it easier to read. From basic text formatting options to added images that accompany the text.

Content components - common formatting patterns that can be mixed and matched
Starter content components →

Landing pages

A landing page is a standalone web page that potential customers go to when they click through from an email, ad, or other campaign. Landing pages serve a specific purpose in a specific moment of a campaign to a target audience. Here are some cases where you would want to take the landing page approach:

Forms

Forms are useful for collecting information from visitors, getting specific details to help with following up. The first thing to keep in mind is to only ask for fundamental information. No one enjoys filling out forms so keep them short!

Share with your team

Your design system is only as strong as your relationships with the team who uses it. Share the design process with your team and develop tools for them to use your components.

Rolling out to your team

Two ways to rollout a design system: Either incrementally, or with a large-scale redesign. Unless there's a need to redesign your campaigns, you should go with an incremental rollout.

Your design system can be big or small: Only build aspects that you need. Start small and build up. Focus on not only building tools, but creating a shared language.

Maintaining your design system: As your system gets adapted, you'll have to go from designing components to getting feedback and tracking usage. Be prepared to maintain updates to your design system as your marketing evolves, along with your team.

Include people in the process

  • Talk to people using the system - find out what they need
  • Get help with gathering assets - this also helps develop a shared understanding of how to measure quality components
  • Be open to feedback - if something is unclear, talk through and get feedback on how to improve
  • Make it easy - provide a point of contact, support ticketing system, discussion forum, etc
  • Include link to system in other processes - new team member on-boarding, company-wide demos and emails, etc

A good design system includes the “why” and “how” of decisions made:

  • How and when to use?
  • How does it fit into the system?
  • What’s the rationale behind it?

Single source of truth

Having your components in an HTML file allows providing your design system as a web page you can send a link to:

Design systems and CMS's

If you're considering using a CMS for your team to build out web pages, look for ones that take the components approach to building. Many modern CMS's do this and even allow drag and drop editing for your components.

CMS from your design system

This guide has been put together by the Blocks Edit team. Having a design system of reusable components for your team to use, Blocks Edit supports using placeholder content so you're able to use your HTML to translate directly into the CMS and make your components visually editable. This also reduces the need for documentation around your design since guidelines are inherent in the setup.

Share this guide

Send via email | Copy link URL