What's it going to cost?

Site Design: There is no "standard price" as every website is different. The final cost will depend on whether you need e-commerce, how many pages you want, integrations with other services and how close the deadline looms. As a rough guide, recent sites have ranged from £750 to more than £1,500.

Domain names: They start at £16/year depending on the extension (.com, .co.uk, etc). If you already have a domain I can build your site using that or register a brand new one for you. You can pay for more than one domain for the same site, for example: yourcompany.co.uk and yourcompany.com.

Hosting: Like design, hosting costs vary according to the features required. A basic site with three or four pages and a blog will cost around £120/year. Sites with e-commerce start at £180/year.

Support: Either charged by the hour or we can negotiate a retainer fee if you require ongoing updates, design, photography, problem-solving, etc.

Payment: After establishing what you want, if you decide to go ahead, I'll ask for a 20% non-refundable deposit by invoice, the remainder to be paid upon successful completion of the project. Costs such as domain name registration, hosting fees, photography (stock or bespoke), fonts, graphics, etc can either be paid up-front or recharged to you.

I already have a site that someone else designed, can you update it?

I can, (he said, cagily). But if you're after a complete redesign, it is usually less complicated – and quicker – to start from scratch, so I'd recommend creating a new site based on the existing design. Content that you want to keep is easily migrated and this will speed up the early stages and keep costs down.

Making an old site work well and look good on desktops, tablets and mobiles can be much more time-consuming and expensive than rebuilding from the ground up on a modern platform like Squarespace.

How long does it take?

The first step will be a discussion around your ideas, requirements and structure for your new site. Examples of websites you like - and don't like(!) – will give me a very helpful picture of your preferences around layout, colours, fonts and so on.

Then there's the content itself, such as text, images, video or audio, graphics, events diaries and so on. If you have all that stuff, great. Or we can discuss ways of writing, creating and finding it.

You may want to give me a detailed brief for the design and what content goes where, or hand over all your raw material and leave me to work out the best way to present it. I’m happy to work with either method, and all points in between.

Once that's done I can give you a more accurate estimate of how long it will take to show you my initial design proposal. After agreeing the direction, I will be able to give you a date for completion and getting your site live.

At all times I will recognise that you are busy running your business and living your life. So I will "just get on with it" and keep any communication or questions necessary, concise and as strictly jargon-free as possible.

In brief, it is a tough ask to give an exact time frame right at the start. But if you have a deadline date, an event such as a wedding or a product launch, that can be part of the early planning. Also, a website is an evolving thing. You can go live with a single page if you need to, then build from there.

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