Cost of Building a Website in the UK: Get an Accurate Quote
A Guide to Provisional Website Building Costs
Before you start commissioning a professional website design you want to know how much it’s going to cost. But before I give you the in-depth answer, let me ask you a different question - how much is a new car?
You need to know if the car is going to carry a single occupant or an entire family with a boot full of luggage. If it’s the latter, you’d probably point me in the direction of an estate car.
But which estate car?
- Petrol or diesel?
- Automatic or manual?
- With a tow bar fitted or without?
I use this analogy all the time with clients because it makes the point immediately. The answer to “how much does a website cost?” is always “it depends” - and that’s not me dodging the question. It’s me being honest about the fact that I need to understand what you’re building before I can price it.
The Level of Specification Determines the Price
Better built websites carry a premium over their lesser rivals, just like a well-engineered car costs more than a runabout. You need to decide whether you need a premium business website build or whether a less expensive workhorse will do the job.
Different website builder platforms exist to tackle different end uses. Choosing the right platform is a matter of budget and practicality, and I spend a lot of my initial conversations with clients helping them work out which one fits their situation.
Getting Your Project Scope Right
To begin with, you need to work out the extent of your website project. What are the deliverables, and when do you need them?
When is the supposed “go live” date? If I’m busy with other clients, I might not be able to meet your deadline, and this can affect the total cost. I’m always upfront about this because I’d rather be honest about timelines than overpromise and deliver something rushed.
Finding a digital marketing partner who can make those briefs come vibrantly to life impacts your project and the website cost significantly. It’s essential that you work in close collaboration with your web design team to achieve the best result. I’ve put together a project management guide for website builds that covers the fundamentals.
Read The Blog: How To Build An eCommerce Website
Project Justification
At its simplest, a project scope could be merely a list of pages that need producing. For example:
- Home
- Services
- FAQ
- Contact
- About
I’ve had clients start with exactly this list. Five pages, clean and simple. That list can then be expanded into greater depth depending on how many pages need components like forms or XML feeds.
Requirements Gathering
For new website builds, requirements gathering isn’t always an essential part of the scope because you’re not developing or integrating with existing site architecture. Even so, I always recommend going through the exercise. For builds where a new website is replacing an old one, requirements gathering is absolutely essential.
I ask these questions on every replacement project:
Are there existing forms, and if so, how is data being collected and where will it be routed?
Are there any XML feeds that need to be integrated?
Is there a separate mobile site or are you using responsive design?
Are image repositories being used? Where are the existing source files or originals?
Do existing images need resizing, cropping and scaling?
Services Provision
Building a website involves the integration of many different technologies. Website creation is made a lot easier with cloud-based solutions that provide everything in a ready-made format, but you’ll still need to decide:
- Who is going to write the content and maintain it?
- Where are graphic design and images being supplied from?
- Who is going to provide ongoing support?
- Who will provide website promotion and SEO services?
Once you’ve determined the high-level requirements, your simple “one-pager” scope document can be used to drive forward the entire website development project.
Alternatively, for larger projects, you can begin to flesh it out with more detail. But I’d offer a word of caution here:
The more detailed and lengthy a project scope becomes, the harder it is to make changes when you discover a better solution halfway through. I always err on the side of brevity.Technology advancements are rapid, and you should be open to incorporating them into your design. I’ve had projects where the technology shifted during the build and the best thing I could do for the client was adapt rather than stick rigidly to the original spec.
Working with a web designer is a two-way street, and the project scope is there to help you both understand what the goals are and what the costs are likely to be.
Once that’s drawn up, it’s time to start looking at which website builder solutions might provide the answer.
Read The Blog: Beginners Guide To Building A Website
How Much Does a Basic Website Actually Cost?
First, let me break down the typical costs involved with all website builders. Then I can choose the features you need and add them to a platform. This way, I can give you actual costs across the board.
Most of the time, what you’re going to pay for a website is determined by your budget. If you don’t have a budget, you should have one. I mean that kindly - knowing your number before you start talking to developers saves everyone time.
The figures I’m giving below are what I think is a reasonable price for the service, based on the level of website you’re trying to produce.
In general, you get what you pay for. A custom logo design that might go through many revisions and be supplied with original .psd files (that’s the Photoshop native format, so any designer can work with it later) will cost around £249. High-end agencies can charge £1,000 or more for a logo, but those costs are associated with high-end websites where the branding is part of a larger identity project.
You can make a logo yourself using an online creation tool, but I’ll be honest - the results will likely be underwhelming.
The same goes for website development costs. Any reasonable freelance developer should be charging between £35 and £50 per hour for their work. Many agency fees go as high as £60 per hour. I tell clients not to be fooled into paying unskilled workers £10 per hour because it will inevitably take them five hours to do the same work a skilled developer does in one.
Skilled web designers and developers working in CSS and JavaScript should be charging around £50 per hour. That’s how much it costs. I’ve seen business owners try to save money by hiring cheap developers, and I’ve then been called in to fix the results. A developer who can make a CSS change in a few seconds to correct a glaring error or make massive improvements to how a site looks and feels is worth far more than one who takes hours to do the same job. If you want the job done to specification and on time, I’d pay the going rate.
Logo creation: £249
Don’t forget to ask for the .psd files as well as the finished .jpg for your logo design. You’ll need to provide them to external agencies for stationery or advertising work down the line.
Graphic design services (custom graphics and artwork): £250
Most of the time a logo is the only artwork you’ll need, but I’ve included this to cover sundries like banner creation or one-off illustrations.
Professional photography services: £25 per image
It’s getting easier to build a website every day, and with competition fiercer than ever, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to have striking imagery. I always recommend paying a professional photographer to shoot your products - it’s a sound investment that pays for itself.
Stock images (25 images): £300
I’ve known companies spend £500 on one stock image without blinking if it’s the right picture. Using paid stock images will save you hours of hunting around the free libraries, but they come at a cost.
Copywriting: £50 per page
Some people find writing for the web incredibly tricky, and their text becomes stilted and corporate. I always tell clients to write as if the person they’re speaking to is sitting directly in front of them. That way it comes across naturally. Alternatively, pay someone to do the job for you. I can tell you from experience that copying and pasting from existing catalogues or brochures does not work well.
SEO services: £2,500
Any website promotion services should come with their own scope document because SEO is so closely tied to site architecture. £250 doesn’t even scratch the surface, and a reasonable ballpark figure for search engine optimisation services would be around £2,500 per annum. I’d recommend exploring my trades business growth programme to get started, and for comprehensive SEO understanding, I’ve written about the art of search engine optimisation.
Website maintenance costs: £1,200+ per annum
Website maintenance covers hosting, domain name registration, and ongoing design and development updates. These are ongoing costs to ensure your site stays updated with the latest security patches and features. Good maintenance also helps optimise performance using tools like Google Analytics and reduces downtime.
Maintenance costs vary wildly depending on the platform. For example, Magento developers can charge between £75 and £125 per hour, whilst WordPress developers typically charge £30 to £40 per hour. I always factor this into the initial conversation because the running costs matter as much as the build cost.
Building a Weebly or Wix Website
Using drag and drop website builders is the most cost-effective way of building a small five to ten-page website that won’t need a lot of ongoing maintenance. For a small business website, I’d recommend using the premium version to remove the adverts that would otherwise be displayed on your pages.
Wix website builder is a straightforward drag and drop tool that can put together beautiful looking sites very quickly and has a vast array of templates to choose from.
I’d recommend paying an experienced Weebly or Wix website designer to develop your site for you. If your time is precious - and if you’re running a business, it is - then this is the obvious way forward.
Weebly is better suited for those who want close control over CSS and layout, while Wix is more suited for those who want better aesthetics out of the box and are happy to go with an existing template.
An excellent Weebly or Wix designer should charge you around £500 to produce a beautiful looking site. You’ll need to pay the monthly hosting plan fee separately. Alternatively, I’d encourage you to explore my affordable website design services or pay monthly website packages for a modern, all-inclusive approach.
Building a Website in WordPress
Creating a ten-page website in WordPress gives you the future flexibility to add many more pages, and for a long time it was the standard approach. A developer can modify an existing template for you, and WordPress has a vast array of useful plugins to automate many tedious processes like on-page SEO.
WordPress is a popular choice because it’s cheap to set up and relatively easy to use. Here are the main reasons you might choose WordPress for a new small business website:
- Low cost - WordPress is free to download and use. You’ll only need to pay for hosting and a domain name.
- Easy to use - It’s one of the more straightforward website builders. Even without prior experience, you can create a professional-looking website.
- Flexible - WordPress can be used for a wide range of websites, and you can easily add new features with plugins.
- Good support - There’s a large community of users who can offer help and advice.
That said, I should be honest: I’ve moved away from WordPress for most of my builds. The maintenance overhead, the security vulnerabilities, and the performance limitations mean I now recommend other solutions for most clients. But it remains a viable option for certain use cases, and I still work with it when the situation calls for it.
Building an Ecommerce Website
For anyone wanting to create a mainstream eCommerce website, it makes very little sense to choose anything other than Shopify or EKM for UK users.
Both solutions rely heavily on templating systems to do most of the heavy lifting, which dramatically reduces the development cost. They’re a far more sensible choice than using an open-source content management system to build an online store - I’ve seen too many businesses go down that road and regret it.
Front-end development costs are likely to be around £2,000 to £3,000 to begin with, and an online store with a large product catalogue is probably closer to £5,000 and upwards. This production cost is a fraction of what you’d spend on an open-source solution like Magento. The beauty of using cloud-based builders like EKM is that if you want to, you can handle some of the more straightforward setup work yourself and save on development costs. If you go with a digital agency for the full build, you’re looking at around £10,000 all in with a proper SEO plan, maintenance fees, and the monthly hosting charge.
That’s the ballpark guide. If you have questions about your specific situation, I’m always happy to talk it through - get in touch.
Tony Cooper
Founder
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