It's the first thing everyone wants to know and the hardest thing to get a straight answer on. Ask three web designers what a website costs and you'll get three different numbers, usually after a lot of hedging. So let me be blunt about it.
The short version
For a small business in Lancashire, a proper website — designed for you, quick to load, and set up to be found on Google — usually starts in the low hundreds and climbs from there depending on how much it needs to do. A simple, smart site to replace a Facebook page is at the lower end. A site with online booking, customer logins or a shop is more, because it's more work.
What I won't do is quote you a number before I understand the job. Anyone who reels off a price in the first thirty seconds is selling you a package, not a website.
Why the same website can be £400 or £4,000
The word "website" covers everything from a one-page brochure to a booking platform, so the price swings on a few things:
- How many pages, and how much of it is custom. A tidy five-page site is a very different job to a forty-page one.
- Whether it's built for you or dropped into a template. A recycled theme is quicker and cheaper up front, and it usually looks like every other business using it.
- What it needs to do. A form is easy. Online payments, a booking calendar or a members' area are proper features that take real work to get right.
- Who's writing the words and taking the photos. Good content is half the job. If you've got it ready, that saves time and money.
What you're actually paying for
A cheap website and an expensive one can look nearly the same in a screenshot. The difference is usually under the bonnet: how fast it loads, whether it works properly on a phone, whether it's built so Google can read it, and whether you can get hold of a human when something breaks.
A website that nobody finds, or that's so slow people give up on it, isn't cheap. It's just cheap to build. That's not the same thing.
When I build a site I'm thinking about the year after launch, not just the day of it. Clean code that's easy to change, local SEO set up from the start, and a build you actually own rather than rent.
A rough idea of what to expect
Every job is different, but as a guide:
- A smart, small site for a trade or local service — the sort of thing that replaces a Facebook page and starts bringing in calls.
- A bigger business site with more pages, proper photography and stronger SEO behind it.
- A custom build with booking, payments, logins or something a template simply can't do.
Before I start anything you get a fixed price in writing. No day-rate meter running in the background, no "that'll be extra" once we're halfway in.
What about the £5-a-month website builders?
They have their place, and if you're happy to build it yourself of an evening, go for it. Just know what you're signing up for: you're renting the site, not owning it. Stop paying and it disappears. They're often slow, they're fiddly to make look right, and getting one to rank locally is an uphill job. Plenty of the redesigns I'm asked to do are exactly these, rebuilt properly.
The bottom line
A website is one of the few things in a small business that keeps working while you sleep. Priced right, it pays for itself in a handful of jobs. If you want a real number for your business rather than a vague range, tell me what you're after and I'll come back with a clear, fixed quote — no pressure and no sales waffle.
Thinking about a new website?
I build sites for small businesses across Burnley and the North West. Fixed prices, no jargon.