Website and online shop design

The price of a website is moved most by the type of site and its links to other software, much more than by the number of pages alone.

When we put a quote together, we look at these items:

• type of site: a company showcase, a service site or an online shop
• a link to the till, card payments on the site or a link to stock and accounting software, so prices and stock levels update themselves
• a calculator, a booking form or another tool that is built separately
• how many different page layouts are needed, for example home, service, price list and project
• whether we write the copy or you already have it
• for a shop, the number of products and the state their data is in
• whether you already have a logo and colours or we make them before the site
• moving from the old site, with redirects for the old addresses

The biggest jump in price is between a site and a shop. A shop with thousands of items costs more because of the data, which has to be imported from a spreadsheet and sorted into categories. Add to that a template that writes the Google title and description for every product by itself.

Every link to other software is built for the system your business already uses, so it is a separate item in the quote. We also do links and automations like these, which work behind the site, as a service of their own, AI and business automation.

Six service pages that share one layout are quicker to build than three pages that each look different, since the layout is designed and built once.

If money needs to be saved, we would rather cut the number of custom designs than the number of service pages. Every service page catches its own search, while a custom design for the about page brings nobody in from Google.

We usually start the build 1 to 2 weeks after we agree. The exact timescale goes into the quote, once we know the page list and whether we are building a shop.

The timescale depends most on the content. Development runs to plan, but we don't launch the site until your prices and photos arrive.

So it is a good idea to gather these before we start:

• a list of services or products, with the prices you want to publish
• photos of real jobs, premises or people, even if taken on a phone
• your logo and colours, if you have them; if you don't, we make the logo and visual identity before the site
• the area you cover and your opening hours
• access to the domain and the old site, if they exist
• for a shop, a product spreadsheet with codes, prices and stock levels

You don't have to write the copy yourself, since we write it from our conversations with you. Read it line by line before launch, because only you know whether every price is correct and whether you really do that service the way it is described.

Phone photos that show your real work tell a customer more than a nicer image taken from the internet, which the customer may already have seen on other sites.

We build sites to measure, with modern technology, because a site like that opens faster and is harder to attack. If you prefer WordPress, we build that too.

WordPress is a free content management system, with thousands of ready-made themes and plugins that someone who doesn't code can install. We build a custom site in Next.js and connect it to the Sanity content editor, so every page has exactly the fields your business needs.

The pages of a custom site are prepared in advance, so on a phone they open without waiting for a theme and plugins to load. Sites we build are checked on Google's PageSpeed test for mobile before launch.

Security is the second difference. According to a Patchstack report, 91% of the new security vulnerabilities found in WordPress during 2025 were in plugins. A custom site has much less third-party code, so it has fewer places to attack and fewer updates after which something stops working.

When you need a calculator, a link to the till or a new type of page, we build it for your site specifically. That way the site grows with the business, so it can later get a shop or another language without moving to a new system.

The smaller number of developers who work in Next.js is a real drawback of a custom site, and you should know about it before you sign a contract for a website with anyone, us included.

We build WordPress when you want it, for example when your team already works in it. Then count on regular updates to the system and plugins for as long as the site runs.

Hosting is the server the site sits on and is served to visitors from. Maintenance covers the checks and changes after launch, everything you can't do yourself in the editor.

We set up hosting for the sites we build. The site gets an https certificate, the padlock next to the address without which Chrome and other browsers tell the visitor the page is not secure. Earlier versions of the site are kept, so a change that breaks something is rolled back to the previous version.

Site maintenance includes:

• a speed and error check after every change
• updates to the parts of the site that need them
• a new page when you introduce a new service or start working in a new city
• changes to layout and new features, which you can't make yourself in the editor
• a monthly report on the site's speed and the enquiries that came in, and you see every change in the client portal too

Maintenance is optional. If you change the site rarely, you don't need ongoing maintenance, and you can order each change separately, only when you need it.

The domain and hosting are costs that last as long as the site runs, and the domain is usually paid once a year. Who pays for and manages them we agree in the quote, so nothing surprises you after handover.

You get a site on a domain registered to your business, an account in the content editor and access to the visit data. The copy and photos stay yours even when we stop working together.

Whoever builds your site, check before signing that these will be in your name:

• the domain, registered to your business
• the Google Search Console and Google Analytics account, where searches and visits are shown
• admin access to the content editor
• the site's code, if it is custom built

If one day you decide to change provider, you get all the access along with the site, so the new developer carries on where we left off.