Straight answers, including the ones that lose us work
Everything here is written to be useful to someone who never hires us. That is the only version of this worth publishing.
Most agency writing exists to rank for a phrase and says as little as possible on the way past, because saying something concrete risks talking a reader out of a purchase. These articles answer the question in the first paragraph instead, and several of them will tell you not to spend money: that a cheap template is fine for what you need, that your problem is not the website, or that the free work you can do yourself matters more than anything we would charge for.
Where a number appears it is either our own published price or a fee published by the company charging it. We do not quote industry averages, because the ones in circulation are agency blogs citing each other, and each is published by a business whose own pricing sits conveniently inside the range it describes.
Articles
Who these are for
Owners of small and medium UK businesses who are about to spend money on a website, or have already spent it and are not sure what they got. Not developers, and not marketers, there is no jargon here that is not explained in the sentence that uses it.
If you are comparing quotes, start with what a website should cost and the twelve questions. If you already have a site and it is not producing anything, start with why nobody can find you, and be prepared for the answer to be that the problem is not the website at all.
How we decide what to write
Only two things qualify. The first is a question we are genuinely asked, repeatedly, by people considering a project: those are written up once, properly, so the answer exists whether or not anyone hires us. The second is something we got wrong ourselves and had to work out, because that is knowledge nobody publishes and everybody needs.
What does not qualify: anything written to hit a keyword, anything summarising a Google announcement you can read yourself, and listicles. If an article would not survive being read by someone who knows the subject, it does not go up.
A warning about this entire genre
Nearly all agency writing about websites is sales material wearing a lab coat, and it is worth knowing the tells so you can apply them here as well as elsewhere.
- Statistics with no source, or with a source that turns out to be another agency blog. "Users decide in 0.05 seconds" has been quoted for a decade with the original study long since detached from its actual finding.
- An article that never reaches a number. If a piece about cost gives you a range of £500 to £50,000 and calls it an answer, it exists to generate an enquiry, not to inform one.
- Urgency without evidence, algorithm updates presented as emergencies, usually followed by a service that resolves the emergency.
- No circumstance in which you should not buy. Every honest recommendation has one.
We publish our prices, state when a cheaper option is the right one, and say plainly where we cannot help. Judge these articles by the same standard you would use on anyone else's.
Tell us what you need
Describe the project in a couple of sentences and we will come back with a fixed price and a realistic timescale. No obligation, and no sales sequence.
Start a build