Let’s make a 20-minute website—

Universe is designed to make building websites fast, playful, and creative. For this series, we’re putting it to the test by challenging a member of the Universe team to make a whole website in just 20 minutes!

Here, Carlos (from our design team) takes a crack at the challenge—and ends up with a dreamy homepage for an imaginary floral business.

HOW THE 20-MINUTE

WEBSITE CHALLENGE WORKS:

1. When the challenge starts, Carlos gets

a .zip folder of assets he can use to

make his website. He’s never seen

them before.

2. This post follows Carlos as he uses

Universe to design, build, and publish

his website in 20 minutes.

3. At the end, Carlos clicks “publish”

and his site goes live…

From here on out, everything you read is in Carlos’ voice.

This is Carlos:

Ok, I’m opening up this .zip file. I’m so excited to see what assets are in here...

Look at all these flowers!

These assets make me think of a flower shop, obviously. I think this is going to be a pretty simple website. I’m just gonna get down to brass tacks and try to move the product before it wilts, you know?

💡CARLOS’ SITE IDEA:💡

A SIMPLE LANDING PAGE FOR SELLING FLOWERS

On Universe, the first step is picking a fun domain.

I love flowerbiz.space. Let’s go with that.

STEP 2:

Pick a grid size and background color

When I get started with a new site, I generally choose the setting that gives me the most squares in my grid. This allows for the most flexibility with where I place things.

Now I’m going to pick a background color. I think I’ll start off with black.

🛠TIP:🛠

UNIVERSE USES A GRID LAYOUT THAT LETS YOU EASILY DRAG AND DROP SITE ELEMENTS, SO THAT THEY ALL LINE UP.

STEP 3:

Start adding assets and designing

For this flower shop, I want it to be a little quirky, but also elegant. I’m going to start off by adding this Flower Power logo at the top of the page.

Ooh, that’s nice already. Seeing this bright blue color against the black is inspiring me to make the whole site black-and-blue monotone.

Next, I think we need a byline to say what this shop sells. Let’s keep it simple and say, “Beautiful blooms for every occasion.”

I like that a lot! And the color palette is really working for me. It’s like you stumbled upon an enchanted flower shop at midnight, and the next day you try to go back, and it’s gone—and you realize it was all a dream.

STEP 4:

Add products

Now it’s time to sell some flowers. Let’s see... which flower should we start with?

I love this blue flower with the site’s color palette. Let’s call this one Midnight Dahlia.

For a description… let’s say it’s a cosmic stem that’s perfect for your wedding raves and intergalactic dance parties. :)

Okay! Now it’s time to add a buy button and set a price.

I’m a modest flower lady, but I do need to make a living. So let’s price this at $30 a stem.

🛠TIP:🛠

OUR PAYMENT BLOCK MAKES IT EASY TO ADD UNLIMITED PRODUCTS, AT ANY PRICE. IT ALSO MAKES IT EASY TO TRACK SALES AND KEEP THINGS ORGANIZED.

STEP 5:

Copy/paste to add more products

Now that I have one product laid out, I can drag in a new product image, and then copy/paste the title, description, and button from the first flower to make things faster.

Let’s add this bird of paradise flower next.

STEP 6:

Add socials, and publish

At the end, I can't forget to add my socials. I think the magical Flower Power shop is on Instagram for sure… maybe also YouTube, for floral-arrangement tutorials. And TikTok!

Hey, this actually looks good. And I just hit the 20-minute mark. So now I’ll push it live!

And just like that, this Flower Power web shop is in business. :)