The questions people actually ask

Fair question — if I saw £495 next to someone else's £4,000 I'd wonder too. The honest answer is overheads and honesty about scope. I don't have an office in town, a sales team or account managers to pay for, and I don't pad quotes with strategy workshops a five-page site doesn't need. I'm also a growing business building a local reputation, so my prices sit where a business winning its first twenty clients should sit — they'll rise as the case studies stack up. There's no catch in the work itself: you see the full scope of every package before you commit, and the homepage-approval guarantee means you judge the quality before the balance is due. Want to test that claim? The free mockup costs you nothing.

Most sites are live within two weeks of the deposit. A Starter one-pager is usually quicker — about a week. Premium builds run two to three. The written quote you get before we start includes your actual timeline, and if you need it faster there's a priority build add-on that puts you at the front of the queue. The main thing that slows a build down, honestly, is waiting on content from the client — I'll tell you exactly what I need from you up front so that doesn't happen.

This is what the guarantee is for, so here it is in full. You pay a deposit to book the work — that protects my time. I then design and build your homepage before anything else, and you don't pay a penny of the balance until you've seen that homepage and approved it — that protects your money. If it's not right, we revise it (revisions are included in every package). If after that it's still not for you, you walk away having only spent the deposit, and you've lost nothing else. It's not a money-back guarantee — it's better than one, because you find out what you're buying before you've bought it, not after.

Yes. Completely. The domain is registered in your name, the site files are yours, and if we part ways you keep everything and it all keeps working. I've seen too many local businesses discover their web company technically owns their own site — it's one of the practices that got me into this. You will never need my permission to do anything with your own website.

You can, whenever you like, and I'll help you do it. The site is built with standard, portable code — no proprietary platform holding it hostage — so any competent developer or host can take it on. If you're on a care plan, you just cancel it (monthly rolling, no exit fee) and I'll hand over the files and access cleanly. Making it easy to leave is, I've found, one of the better reasons people stay.

Straight answer: it depends, and I'll tell you which side you're on rather than sell you one regardless. If you've got a simple one-pager and nothing about your business changes, skip it and pay by the job when something needs doing — I say exactly that on the care plans page. If your site has multiple pages, changing prices, offers or seasonal work, the plan usually pays for itself the first time a would-be customer sees current information instead of last year's. From £25 a month with no lock-in, it's priced so cancelling is painless if it's not earning its keep.

Either of us — your call. If you've got words you're happy with, I'll shape them to fit the design. If you haven't, copywriting is included in Premium and available as a £60-per-page add-on on the others: we have a phone call, you talk about your business the way you'd talk to a customer, and I turn that into the site's words — in your voice, not mine. What I won't do is launch a site full of filler text and call it done.

Good photos matter more than most people expect — often more than the design. If you have decent photos of your work, your premises or your team, we use those; real beats stock every time for a local business. If you don't, I'll be honest about it: for some trades, well-chosen stock imagery does the job fine, and for others (food, salons, anything visual) I'll recommend getting real photos taken and can point you at how to do it affordably. Either way I'll tell you before the build, not after.

I don't know, and neither does anyone who promises you it will — that promise is the most reliable red flag in this industry, because nobody controls Google's results. What I can promise is the process: your site built so Google can properly read every page, each page targeting what your customers actually search for, your Google Business Profile set up right, and the technical foundations — speed, mobile, structure — done properly. That's what's in anyone's control, and for local searches it's most of the battle. I sell the work, not a position.

It happens all the time — you see the homepage and suddenly want a gallery page you hadn't thought of. The process is simple: any change to the agreed scope gets quoted in writing before I build it, you approve it or you don't, and the original quote stays untouched either way. You'll never open an invoice and find surprises on it. That's the whole point of quoting like a tradesman.

If you want to, yes — tell me before the build and I'll set it up so the bits you'll change (prices, hours, photos) are easy to reach, and I'll walk you through it at handover. Plenty of clients prefer to send me a message and have it done for them instead, which is what the care plans are for. There's no wrong answer, but it's worth deciding early because it shapes how I build.

Less than you'd think, but it matters. Roughly: an hour of your time up front to talk about the business, your logo and any photos you have, the words if you're writing them (or that phone call if I am), and reasonably quick answers when I check things with you mid-build — that last one is what keeps the two-week timeline honest. I'll give you the full list in writing with the quote, so nothing lands on you as a surprise halfway through.