Website Design and Development UK

What design and development actually means

Design is deciding what the site should say, how it should be laid out and how it should look. Development is turning that into working code that loads in a browser, sends enquiries to your inbox and lets you edit pages without breaking anything. Plenty of agencies split the two. A designer produces visuals in Figma, then hands them to a developer, often a freelancer, who has to guess at spacing, hover states and how a three-column layout should behave on a 360 pixel wide phone.

We do both. The person who planned your layout knows why a button sits where it does, so it doesn't drift during the build. If something in the design turns out to be slow or awkward to code, we change the design rather than ship a compromise. That's the main reason website design and build sit together here.

How a build runs, step by step

1. Discovery. A call about your customers, your services and what a good enquiry looks like. We agree the page list and the main action you want visitors to take.
2. Structure. A sitemap and wireframes for the key templates, so we agree content and order before any colours appear.
3. Design. Full visual designs for the home page and one inner page at desktop and mobile widths. Two rounds of changes are normal.
4. Build. We code the templates, set up the CMS, add your content and connect forms, analytics and Search Console.
5. Testing. Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, real iPhone and Android handsets, keyboard-only navigation and a Lighthouse run on every template.
6. Launch. DNS switch, SSL, 301 redirects from old URLs and a sitemap submitted to Google.

A Starter site is typically live in 3 to 4 weeks and a Business site in 5 to 6 weeks. See how we work for more detail.

The technical standards we build to

Every site we build is mobile-first. We write the phone layout first and add complexity as the screen gets wider, typically at breakpoints around 640, 1024 and 1280 pixels. That keeps the code you send to phones small.

• Speed: images served as WebP or AVIF at the size they're displayed, fonts limited to two families, and no page builders that load half a megabyte of unused CSS. Google's web.dev guidance sets a good Largest Contentful Paint at 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint at 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of real visits. We build to those numbers.
• Markup: one H1 per page, logical heading order, real buttons and links, and schema.org types such as LocalBusiness, Service and BreadcrumbList.
• Accessibility: colour contrast of at least 4.5:1 for body text, visible focus states and labelled form fields, checked against WCAG 2.2 AA.
• Security: HTTPS everywhere, a security headers baseline, spam protection on forms and no abandoned plugins.

Choosing the platform

We don't push one platform for every job. For most service businesses we recommend WordPress with a lightweight custom theme built for the block editor, because you can edit it easily and you'll never struggle to find someone to support it. For shops we use Shopify or WooCommerce depending on your catalogue, stock system and how hands-on you want to be. For a small site that rarely changes, a static build is the fastest and most secure option and costs almost nothing to host.

We'll explain the trade-offs in plain English before you commit, and the platform choice is written into the quote.

Websites versus web apps

A website tells people about your business and gets them to contact you or buy. A web app does a job for logged-in users: customer portals, quoting tools, booking systems with complex rules, or anything that talks to your own database. If your project is really an app, our sister company builds bespoke software and web apps, and we can design the marketing site that sits in front of it.

If you're not sure which you need, tell us what you want people to be able to do and we'll say honestly which side of the line it falls.

Costs and what's included

Our Starter package is from £250 + VAT for up to 5 pages with a custom design, contact form, click-to-call, Google Business Profile setup, Analytics and Search Console. Business is from £500 + VAT for up to 15 pages, copywriting, full schema markup, Core Web Vitals optimisation, conversion tracking and a training session. Ecommerce is from £750 + VAT. Extra design time or small changes after launch are £45 an hour + VAT.

Domains, hosting, stock photos and premium plugins are listed separately in your quote, never hidden. Full details are on our pricing page, or ask for a quote.

What you get

• Sitemap and page plan agreed before design starts
• Custom design for desktop, tablet and mobile
• Front-end build in clean, semantic HTML and CSS with minimal JavaScript
• CMS set up so you can edit text, images and pages yourself
• Contact forms, click-to-call and conversion tracking wired up
• Cross-browser and device testing on a private staging site
• Launch, redirects from your old URLs, and Search Console submission
• Handover of every login, plus a recorded walkthrough

Prices and how it works

Websites from £250 + VAT, business websites from £500 + VAT and ecommerce from £750 + VAT. Small changes are £45 an hour + VAT. You get a fixed quote before we start.

1. Free chat

   Tell us about your business, who your customers are and what the website needs to do. No charge, no obligation.

2. Fixed quote

   You get a fixed price and a clear list of what is included, in writing, before anything starts.

3. Design

   We plan the pages and design the site around your customers, then share it for your comments.

4. Build and test

   We build it mobile-first, write or polish the copy, set up SEO foundations and test it on real phones.

5. Launch and hand over

   We launch, connect analytics and Search Console, and show you how to update it. You own it all.

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