What a small business website costs
Most small business sites are four to eight pages and land between £1,500 and £6,000. Here is what separates the bottom of that range from the top, and what pushes a project past it.
A small business website has a narrow job: make you look credible, explain what you do, and make it easy to get in touch. That is achievable at a wide range of prices, and the differences between them are real but not always obvious.
| Budget | What you typically get | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| £500 – £1,500 $650 – $2,000 | A quality template with your branding, content and images placed into it. Minimal custom design. | Getting online credibly and quickly when budget is the binding constraint. |
| £1,500 – £3,500 $2,000 – $4,500 | A template meaningfully customised, or a simple original design. A content editor. Basic SEO setup. | Most small businesses. This is where the majority of work lands. |
| £3,500 – £6,000 $4,500 – $7,500 | Original design throughout, custom page layouts, copywriting help, a proper content structure. | Businesses where the site is a main source of enquiries. |
| £6,000+ $7,500+ | Everything above plus integrations, booking, multiple locations, or heavy content. | Businesses with something genuinely more complex to handle. |
What pushes a small site over budget
Simple sites go over budget for predictable reasons. Nearly all of them are avoidable.
Content that is not ready
This is the single biggest one. If copy, photos and logos are not ready when the build starts, the project either stalls or the designer writes them for you and charges for it. Get your content together before you commission the work, or agree in advance who is writing it.
Scope that grew quietly
"Can we just add a blog?" is not a small request. Neither is "can we add a booking form?" Both are reasonable asks — they just need repricing, and a designer who absorbs them silently will resent the project or cut corners elsewhere.
Too many decision-makers
Two people can agree on a design. Five cannot. Every additional approver adds revision rounds, and revision rounds are where fixed-price projects turn into arguments. Nominate one person who decides.
Integrations nobody mentioned
The booking system you already use, the mailing list, the accounting software. These come up in week three surprisingly often. Mention them at quote stage.
What you should get for any budget
Some things are not premium features. If a quote at any price does not include these, ask why.
- It works on a phone. Most of your visitors will be on one. This is not an extra.
- You can edit the text yourself. Otherwise every typo costs you money and a wait.
- The domain and hosting are in your name. Not the designer's account.
- It loads quickly. A slow site loses visitors and ranks worse.
- Basic SEO groundwork. Page titles, descriptions, a sitemap submitted to Google.
- An SSL certificate. Free with almost all hosting. Browsers warn visitors without one.
If a quote lists "mobile responsive" and "SSL" as paid extras, you are being sold standard practice as an upgrade.
Common questions
01How many pages does a small business actually need?
Most need four to six: a home page, a services page (or one page per main service), an about page and a contact page. Adding more pages before you have anything to put on them rarely helps. It is better to have five good pages than twelve thin ones, both for visitors and for search.
02Can I just use Wix or Squarespace myself?
Yes, and for some businesses that is the right call. Building it yourself costs you time rather than money, and the result is usually adequate. You would hire a designer when the site is a significant source of enquiries, when you need it to look distinctly better than competitors, or when your time is worth more spent elsewhere.
03How long should a small business site take?
Four to six weeks is typical from kick-off to launch, assuming content is ready. The build itself is often only two to three weeks of that; the rest is content, feedback and revisions. Projects that run long almost always do so because content arrived late.
04Do I need to pay monthly for anything?
Hosting and a domain, yes — usually £60 to £400 a year combined. Maintenance is optional. Be wary of arrangements where a monthly fee is the only way to make changes to your own site, or where stopping payments means losing the site.
Get a fixed quote in writing
Answer five questions and we come back with one number, inside a day. You are not committing to anything by asking.
Or email contact@hire-web-designer.com