01Why the range is so wide
Two quotes for a website can differ by a factor of forty and both be honest, because the word covers wildly different things. At the bottom, somebody drops your logo into a template and hands it back. At the top, a team researches your customers, designs something from nothing and builds it in code.
Neither is a rip off. They are different products with the same name. The problem is that nobody explains which one they are selling, so you are left comparing numbers that are not comparable.
What follows is what mine actually is, so you can hold it up against anything else you have been quoted.
02Where the money goes
Roughly three quarters of the fee is time spent writing and building. The writing is a bigger share than people expect, and it is the part that decides whether the site works.
Most small business websites fail on words rather than design. The pages say what the business wants to say instead of what the customer is worried about. Rewriting that is slow, it involves asking you questions you may not have been asked before, and it is where the value is.
The remaining quarter is the setup nobody sees: structured data so machines can read it, a Google Business Profile connected properly, testing on real phones rather than a shrunken browser window, and submitting the thing to search engines so it actually gets indexed.
03What is in it
A small site, usually five to seven pages, built around what you sell rather than around a template’s idea of what a business looks like. Phones first, because that is where most of your visitors are.
Written so search engines and AI assistants can read it, with the structured data in place and the Google listing sorted at the same time. I do not charge separately for that, because a site that cannot be found is not finished.
One round of changes, written into the quote, so asking for a tweak is never a worry. Live 48 hours after the brief is complete.
04What is deliberately not in it
A bespoke visual identity. If you need a logo, brand colours and a typeface designed from nothing, that is a different job with a different person, and I will say so.
Custom functionality. A booking system that checks live availability, a calculator, a customer portal, anything that has to talk to another system you already use. Those are real work and they are quoted separately.
Photography and copywriting from nothing. I will rewrite and shape what you give me, and I will ask questions to get more out of you, but I am not going to invent your case studies.
Endless rounds. One round is included. A second is ninety-five pounds. I will always tell you when a request has crossed the line before I start it, never afterwards.
05When you should pay more
If a platform is standing in your way. You have tried one and hit a wall, or the thing you need it to do requires three paid add-ons held together with hope.
If you need a tool rather than a brochure. Something that calculates, books, tracks or connects to software you already run.
If the site is the business. If every order comes through it, the difference between good and adequate is worth far more than the difference in fee.
Most small businesses are in none of those situations, and I would rather say so than take the larger number.
06The yearly bit, said plainly
There is £100 a year on top, and it covers hosting and your domain name. There is no platform subscription underneath it, because there is no platform.
The domain is registered in your name, not mine. If you already own one, bring it and the price does not change.
Be suspicious of anybody who will not tell you the ongoing cost, or who holds your domain in their own name. You should own it outright, and leaving should be easy even if neither of us expects you to.
Written by Morgan Loughton at Ferris Creative in Forest Row. If something here does not match what you are seeing on your own site, email me and I will take a look.