A recurring question for web site design companies is ‘How much to design a website?’

This alone (without further information) is generally an indication the person has little intention of having a website built and definitely hasn’t given any thought to the fact that sites could be vastly different even when covering the exact same subject matter.

Here is a general breakdown of what’s involved.

1. Colours.
The look and mood of a website can differ greatly based on which colours are used. Design professionals use colours as the foundation towards the overall feel of the site. As well as the initial colours, there’s complimentary and contrasting colours to think about in addition to text colours.

2. Navigation.
Making a website easy to use is very much down to the way the person browsing is resulted in the important parts of the website. This really is something which could make the difference between visitors exploring your website or leaving after a couple of frustrated clicks.

3. Images.
The graphics side of web design has great impact and anything from the background to buttons could be customised to produce or increase the desired look. Even supplied photos usually have to become adjusted, manipulated or resized to fit in with the desired finish. If stock photos are to be applied to boost the site, these need to be chosen carefully from countless similar images and manipulated to fit in. The header graphics for the website normally has to be created within the same theme and to fit the company logo or letterhead for consistency.

4. Content.
The only most important thing in your site is the written text. This is when your visibility in the search engines is gained or lost. Besides the topical content help people to find you however it helps you to turn browsers into customers. To create content for both the search engines like google and also the consumer is very a skill and one which most laypersons would find extremely hard to do well.

5. Forms
One of the more useful tools online may be the ‘contact’ form. In my opinion, it is really an essential a part of any web site as feedback or inquiries from customers or potential prospects is vital to the business.

6. Moving Images / Flash or Gif
Custom banners, moving text, photo sequences etc… are typical occurrences in websites and can enhance a website if used well.

7. Shopping cart
Shopping or ‘paying online’ is a crucial service for a lot of websites there are extremely secure methods that are simple to apply for invoice payment etc. At ‘A Star Universal’ we use ‘Google Checkout’ for online payment. Paypal also perform a similar API for simple ‘buy now’ functionality. These simple carts are ideal for businesses selling a restricted quantity of items.

There’s also the full fledged shopping cart which is usually set up like a separate site in itself and may incorporate huge amounts of things and multiple payment methods.

8. SEO
This stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. SEO has become an integral part of website design as people come to realise that if you will find the best looking site on the planet, it’s no good if no-one will find it. Apart from the SEO included in this content, additionally, there are directory and search engine submission and content creation, to provide simple facts. There are lots of elements to SEO but many web-site designers now acknowledge the need for basic SEO inside the design.