What We Build When You Ask for a Website

Four projects wearing one word

A five-page site to establish that you exist and a customer portal with accounts and payments are both “websites”. They share a delivery mechanism and nothing else — not the cost, not the timeline, not the skills involved.

So the first thing we do with a website enquiry is establish which of four things is being asked for. It takes ten minutes and it prevents the most common disappointment in this industry, where a client budgeted for one and was quoted for another.

1. The brochure site

Five to fifteen pages that say who you are, what you do and how to reach you. Its job is to satisfy someone who already heard your name and went looking. Nobody arrives here from search for a generic term, and that is fine — it is not what it is for.

• Clear positioning above the fold, and a phone number that is not hidden
• Fast on a phone on a poor connection
• Findable for your own company name and your town
• Easy for you to edit, or cheap for us to edit

Typical range £2,500–£8,000, three to six weeks. Anyone quoting £40,000 for this is quoting for something else, and anyone quoting £400 is giving you a template with your logo on it.

2. The lead engine

A site whose purpose is measurable enquiries. Same technology as the brochure site, entirely different design process: it is built around the questions a buyer asks in order, and every page ends in a next step.

This is where the money goes into research rather than pixels — what people search, what objections they carry, what proof they need before they will call. The design is downstream of that.

A brochure site is judged by whether you like it. A lead engine is judged by the number of enquiries per hundred visitors, which is a much less comfortable and much more useful standard.

Typical range £8,000–£25,000, six to twelve weeks.

3. The content platform

Hundreds or thousands of pages, structured content, categories, search, and a publishing workflow your team uses weekly. The engineering is in the content model and the editing experience, not the homepage.

The failure mode here is specific: a beautiful site with a content management system nobody on the team can bear to use, so nothing gets published and the investment decays quietly.

Typical range £15,000–£60,000, ten to twenty weeks.

4. The web application

Accounts, logins, data, permissions, payments, workflow. This is software that happens to be delivered in a browser, and it should be scoped like software rather than like a website.

• User accounts and roles, which is where the complexity multiplies
• Data that changes and has to stay correct
• Integrations with systems you already run
• Security, audit trails and a real testing burden

Typical range £25,000–£120,000+, twelve to twenty-four weeks.

How we work out which one you need

Three questions settle it almost every time.

1. Does anyone log in? If yes, it is an application, whatever else it also is.
2. Does the content change weekly? If yes, the publishing workflow is a real part of the project.
3. Where do enquiries come from today? If the answer is referrals only, a lead engine is a bigger change than it sounds — and possibly the wrong first investment.

Plenty of businesses need the £5,000 version and have been quoted for the £40,000 one. We would rather sell you the right project twice than the wrong project once.

Frequently asked questions