Design decisions a website buyer actually has to make

Sixteen design decisions get made on every business website, whether or not the person paying for it is in the room when they happen. This section names each one, explains what is actually at stake, and gives you the questions to ask so a decision gets made on purpose rather than by whoever was still awake at 11pm before launch.

This is not a design course. It is written for the person approving the work, not the person doing it, and it deliberately stops short of technique. Where a decision touches the law — accessibility obligations in particular — this section links to the standards pages that carry that weight rather than repeating it, because design and legal compliance are different questions with different consequences for getting them wrong.

Why a non-designer needs to read any of this at all

Design decisions get made whether you are consulted or not. A supplier who never raises above-the-fold priority, colour contrast, or what happens on a phone has still made choices about all three — by default, usually in favour of whatever the template does out of the box. The purpose of this section is to move those choices from default to deliberate, before they are built rather than after.

The cost asymmetry is the reason this matters. A layout decision made in a wireframe review costs a conversation. The same decision, discovered after launch because enquiries are not converting, costs a redesign. Every page here exists to move a specific decision earlier.

What “good” design actually means on a business site

What good web design actually looks like sets up the whole section: personal taste is not the test, because two people can dislike the same design and disagree about why, while a design that fails to convert fails for measurable reasons regardless of anyone’s opinion of it. Everything after this page is an application of that distinction to a specific decision.

The website design decisions, in the order they actually get made

Stage	Decision	Page
First impression	What sits above the fold and what gets over-invested in	Above the fold
Reading	Type choices that affect whether copy gets read	Typography for readability
Reading	Colour and contrast, beyond aesthetic preference	Colour and contrast
Identity	Carrying an existing logo and brand onto the web	Using your logo and brand on the web
Imagery	Real photography versus stock, and when each is honest	Photography: real vs stock
Imagery	Illustration and icons doing real work versus filling space	Illustration and iconography
Layout	White space and content density	White space and density
Structure	Consistency and reusable components across pages	Design consistency and components
Behaviour	Designing for scanning, not reading start to finish	Designing for scanning, not reading
Conversion	What makes a button actually get clicked	Buttons and calls to action
Conversion	Forms that get filled in versus abandoned	Forms that get filled in
Edge cases	Error states and empty states	Error and empty states
Process	Designing the mobile view first	Designing the mobile view first
Identity	Carrying a print identity onto the web without it breaking	Print carry-over
Supplier choice	When a template is genuinely the right answer	When a template is the right answer

The thread that runs through all sixteen

Every page in this section makes the same underlying argument from a different angle: a design choice on a commercial website is defensible when it is traceable to how a visitor actually behaves, and it is not defensible when its only justification is that someone liked it. That distinction is easy to state and hard to apply in the room, which is why it needs sixteen separate, concrete pages rather than one abstract one.

A second thread runs alongside it. Several of the practices this section is candid about — “unlimited design concepts” that are template variants with the colours swapped, stock photography sold to a client as though it were commissioned, decorative animation billed as a feature — are common in the Australian website market and are not illegal or even always dishonest, but they are worth naming plainly so a buyer can ask about them before signing rather than discover them after.

Effective website design decisions and how customers actually navigate a site

Effective website design decisions are ultimately judged by the navigation customers experience once a site is live, not by how the concepts looked in a meeting. Navigation that makes sense to the person who built it and confuses everyone else is a common, avoidable failure — designing for scanning, not reading covers the research behind why. A design that photographs well but sends customers down the wrong path costs conversion, not applause, and that is the test every design decision in this section applies.

Where web design work stops and other work starts

Design decides what a page looks like and how it behaves. It does not decide what the page is built on, how fast it loads, or whether it is technically accessible to someone using a screen reader — those are development, performance and standards questions respectively, and this site covers them elsewhere. Website accessibility in Australia is the page to read for the legal side of several topics in this section, particularly colour contrast and form labelling; design pages here describe the visual and interaction choices, not the compliance obligation itself.

Design also does not decide price on its own, though it is one of the larger inputs into it. A design-heavy brief with several unique templates and a component library costs more to build and, usually, more to maintain than a single flexible template applied consistently. Website design services sets out what is actually delivered across a typical engagement, including where design work sits inside it, and website design packages shows how the amount of custom design work scales what a package includes.

Who this section is genuinely useful for

Anyone who has been sent design concepts and does not know what to say about them beyond “I like number two.” Anyone comparing two quotes where one includes “unlimited revisions” and wants to know what that phrase usually means in practice. Anyone whose current site was designed once, years ago, and needs a way to tell whether the problem is the design or something else entirely — usability, content, or a technical fault masquerading as a design complaint.

It is less useful, and says so plainly where relevant, for anyone wanting to become a designer themselves. That is a different site’s job.

How to use this section

Read what good web design actually looks like first; it sets the test the other fifteen pages apply. After that, the sixteen pages do not need to be read in order — go to the decision in front of you. If you are reviewing concepts this week, above the fold, colour and contrast and buttons and calls to action will do the most immediate work. If you are further back, scoping a brief, designing the mobile view first and when a template is the right answer will save the most money.

None of this replaces a conversation with the person actually designing your site. It exists so that conversation happens on even footing. For where design sits inside web design as a whole discipline, start with web design in Australia.