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What website tools are available to give my business the maximum

How much does a website cost to design and build?

Because of the nature and the scope of websites it's a very difficult question to answer without drilling down into the nature of the project and what is required. There are so many variables involved in the building of a website. One analogy would be houses; You can't go into an estate agent and ask how much a house costs. You can't even ask how much a semi-detached house costs because an enormous number of factors need to be taken into consideration - its location, has it got a garden, and if so, how big is the garden? Whether it has double glazing and central heating, what the decor is like. How new is the boiler, and is it in an area prone to flooding? Once you get into specifics, then the estate agent could quite easily tell you that a house in this location, in this condition with these fixtures and fittings and a garden this size is worth X, and it's the same with a website.

What Maddison Creative web design Newcastle can do, though, is once we've had a chat about what you're looking for, we can work out how long it will all take and give you an up-front cost with the guarantee that if the project takes longer, or is more work than anticipated, then providing the scope of the work involved doesn't change (ie there are no further requests or changes to the original brief), then the cost will not escalate, so you can budget in advance of the work, safe in the knowledge that it will not escalate.

How have web technologies evolved with time?

The web is built on several technologies working together to produce the dynamic resource it has become. But what are these, and how did they come about?

The basic building block of the web is a markup language called HTML. This enables content to be presented to the user in a particular way using 'tags'. Without it the web simply couldn't function. HTML was introduced as an experimental technology in 1992, allowing web designers to build a page using text, images and a basic framework to share information to users browsing remotely from their computer.

Mosaic was the first browser to be released, and despite it being launched eons ago in web technology terms, it is still recognizable to a user of a web browser today. Opera and Internet Explorer soon followed, as did HTML2, an evolution of HTML. In a relatively short space of time HTML3 and HTML4 were introduced, and included significant input from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in order to ensure that competing interests from involved parties wouldn't compromise the technology.

HTML4 would become recognized as THE version of HTML for the next ten years because of this, the '4' was invariably dropped in favour of just 'HTML'.

Meanwhile, Javascript, Java and Flash were developed and launched to allow greater complexity in the design, animation, interactivity and functionality of websites. CSS was then introduced to separate the content of a webpage and its styling. Several other browsers followed, including Safari, Firefox and Chrome, and small updates were made in the guise of XML in the following 10 years but it wasn't until 2008 and the introduction of HTML5/CSS3 that HTML made a serious leap forward. HTML5 gave the designer and the user even more scope for dynamic, interactive client side content, running natively in the browser, Flash having been long since phased out due to its reliance on a third-party plugin.

Maddison Creative web design Newcastle were founded in 2009

Today, the main driver of technology change is the increasing number of devices that browsers use to access websites - mobile phones, tablets, touchscreen devices - all dictate how websites are built, replacing the once ubiquitous desktop browser.

What are the benefits of advertising my business dynamically online via a website?

One of the great features of promoting your business via the web is that you can add to your site almost instantaneously. You could think of an idea for a promotion one lunchtime and but close of business it can be live, with little or no lead time and no costly printing to contend with.

Unlike printed media and traditional advertising methods, if you publish your website and you decide that your offer is no longer available, your prices need to change or you want to change your messaging, you can do it quickly, easily, and more importantly very cost effectively 'on-the-fly', allowing you to be as reactive and as responsive to market forces as you wish.

Similarly, if you have something time-sensitive you wish to communicate to your customer base, you can add it to your site where it can be made live immediately, and once it's no longer needed it can be taken down just as quickly.

You no longer need to scrap boxes and boxes of flyers, or have expensive TV or radio commercials remade. You simply contact your web manager/designer, let them know what the update is, and they will update hassle free. Should you have opted for a CMS (Content management system) website where you have the ability to update the content yourself, then it's even easier! You simply log in to the admin area, navigate to the page in question, edit your text, hit save and you're done!

What other web services do you provide?

Maddison Creative Web Design Newcastle also provide a wide range of additional design services, including banner ad design, digital display ads, online and offline graphic design, logo design and branding, powerpoint template design, email design, landing page design and build, infographic design for use on the web and in print, animation, filmography, video editing, brand consultancy, design consultancy, interactive media, games, puzzles, quizzes, competitions. If what you're looking for isn;t on this list, then by all means, get in touch - it may still be something we can help you with!

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