Website design FAQs

Website design is planning how a website looks, reads and works for the people using it: its layout, colours, typography, images, navigation and the words on each page. Good design balances strong visuals with usability, so visitors can find what they need and take the next step on any screen size. Design usually comes before development, when developers turn the approved design into working pages. On most business projects it also covers the page structure and copy, not just the visuals.

A web design agency plans, designs, builds and launches websites for businesses, and usually looks after them afterwards. A typical agency team includes a project manager, copywriters, designers, developers and someone who tests the site before it goes live. With one team covering all of it, the words, design and build are planned together rather than handed between suppliers. Any good agency should also offer ongoing support after launch.

The 7 C’s of website design are context, content, community, customisation, communication, connection and commerce. Jeffrey Rayport and Bernard Jaworski described them in their 2000 book E-Commerce as the seven design elements of a website’s customer interface. They were written for online stores, but still work as a checklist for any business site: context, for example, is the layout and design, and connection is how well the site links to other sites. Some agencies use a different set of 7 C’s borrowed from writing advice, so check which list you’re reading.

There’s no official list of five elements, and each source picks a different five. The ones most lists share are a clear purpose and message, easy navigation, useful content, a consistent visual style, and good usability. The clear message matters most: Nielsen Norman Group found visitors often leave a page within 10 to 20 seconds, so your value has to come across in the first 10. For an established checklist, usability specialists use Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics.

UX (user experience) design is about how using a website works and feels: whether people can find what they need, understand it and finish a task. UI (user interface) design is the visual layer they interact with, such as buttons, menus, typography and colour. UI is part of UX, so a site can look polished and still frustrate people if pages load slowly or a simple task takes too many steps. On a business website, UX decides whether visitors become enquiries, and UI makes the business look credible while they do.

A wireframe is a simple, mostly black-and-white layout of a page that shows where the headings, content, images and buttons will go, before any colour, fonts or code. It’s the skeleton of the page, so you can agree the structure and the order of information first. Changing a wireframe is much quicker and cheaper than changing a finished design or a built page. When you review one, focus on what’s on the page and in what order, not on how it looks.

A design system is a set of reusable components, patterns and rules, such as colours, type, buttons and page sections, that keeps every page of a website consistent. A full design system with its own team suits large organisations with years of ongoing design work, which is more than most small businesses need. A lightweight version is still worth having: a defined set of sections and styles your team can reuse to add pages that stay on-brand. Our own website is built that way, so adding a page doesn’t mean designing from scratch.

Your website should clearly look and sound like your brand, but it doesn’t need to copy your print guidelines exactly. Screens have rules print doesn’t: under WCAG, normal text needs a colour contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, brand fonts may need web versions, and layouts have to work on a phone. Your logo is exempt from the contrast rules, so the brand stays intact while the rest adapts. We check your colours and fonts against these rules at the start, so nothing has to change late in the project.

A website looks trustworthy when it’s well designed, upfront about who you are and what you offer, kept current, and connected to the rest of the web, the four factors Nielsen Norman Group has used since 1999. In practice that means a real address and phone number, named people, recent work, and reviews on Google, which people trust more than testimonials on your own site. Businesses that hide basic information, such as prices or how they work, get ruled out quickly. Typos and broken links undo the rest, because they signal a lack of care.

Website accessibility means designing and building a site that people with disabilities can use, including people who rely on screen readers, keyboards or zoom. In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 makes disability discrimination unlawful in areas of public life, and the Commission’s view is that this covers goods and services provided online, by businesses as well as government. The Australian Human Rights Commission recommends meeting WCAG 2.2 at Level AA as a minimum. Its guidelines aren’t legally binding, and the Commission upheld WCAG as relevant under the Act in Maguire v SOCOG (2000), a complaint about the Sydney Olympics website.

At Webhaus, website design and development projects start from $10,000, and a business website with 10 to 30 pages, a CMS, forms and analytics is usually $25,000 to $60,000, all excluding GST. That covers strategy, copywriting, design and development, quoted as a fixed price for an agreed scope. The biggest things that move the price are the number of page templates, integrations, how much copy and content needs writing or moving, the platform and any custom features. Hosting and maintenance after launch are separate, from $550 a month.

Our landing pages start from $3,500, and typically cost $3,500 to $7,500 for the first page and $1,500 to $3,000 for each extra variant (ex GST). That includes the copy, design and build, tracking setup, testing versions of the page, and hosting outside your current website. Lower-priced landing pages often leave the copywriting to you, and the copy is what makes a landing page convert. Before you compare quotes, check whether copy, tracking and hosting are included.

Our redesign projects start from $10,000 ex GST, and redesigning a business website with 10 to 30 pages is usually $25,000 to $60,000. Staying on your current platform generally costs less than moving to a new one. If the redesign moves you to a new platform, SEO migration adds $1,800 to $4,500 to protect your rankings with redirects and checks. Sometimes a few new pages fix the problem without a full redesign, and we’ll tell you if that’s the case.

Website quotes vary because agencies are rarely quoting for the same work, even from the same brief. One quote might cover a template filled with copy and photos you supply, while another includes strategy, copywriting, accessibility, SEO setup, analytics and support after launch. Three quotes of $6,000, $32,000 and $60,000 can each be fair for what they include. Compare scope against scope, and add a price for anything left out that you’ll need anyway.

Compare what’s included, not the total. Put the quotes side by side, list the pages, copywriting, design rounds, integrations, SEO and redirects, hosting and support each one covers, and add a price for anything a quote leaves out that you’ll need anyway. Check the revision rounds and how extra changes are charged, because that’s where most disputes start. Our guide to questions to ask website design services includes a simple 0 to 2 scoring system for comparing answers.

Less than you might think: your brand guidelines (or your logo, colours and fonts), access to your current website, and any photos or video you already have. We’ll also ask for access to your domain, hosting, Google Analytics, Search Console and Google Business Profile, and send you a simple checklist so nothing is missed. Most of all, we need your knowledge of the business and your customers, and your decisions at key points. Send what you have, and we’ll work out the gaps together at kickoff.

We write it. Copywriting is included in our website projects: we send you a questionnaire to capture what you know, write the draft, then refine it with your feedback, so you never start from a blank page. We map the pages and write the message before design starts, so the design is built around real words rather than placeholder text. You review and approve every page before it goes live.

Not always, but real photos of your team, work and premises almost always beat stock photos. Nielsen Norman Group’s eyetracking research found people ignore stock photos of generic people but look closely at real ones; on one team page, users spent 10% more time on the portraits than on the biographies. For trades and service businesses, well-lit phone photos of your work can do the job, while brands that sell on looks usually need a professional shoot. We recommend booking it once the page structure is agreed, so you shoot what the design needs.

Two rounds of feedback are built in, and the design is based on the strategy and wireframes you’ve already approved, so changes stay focused. You review the work on a live staging link and comment directly on the page, and we work through each round before moving on. If your feedback is delayed, the timeline moves with it.

You’ll be most involved at the start and at sign-off points, not day to day. We need your knowledge of the business and customers at kickoff, feedback on the page structure, copy and design, and a final sign-off before launch; in between, we keep things moving and send you a short update every week. Most projects take around 6 to 8 weeks. You make the important decisions, and you won’t need to manage the project for us.

Yes. We’re platform-agnostic, so we can redesign a Webflow, Shopify, WordPress or custom-coded site without moving it, and staying on your current platform usually costs less than migrating. We start with an audit, and if your site has good bones, a refresh or a few new pages may be all you need. And if the main problem is campaign pages, we can add landing pages beside your current site without touching it.