Web design for small businesses, without being treated like one.
Being a one-person business is not a smaller version of being a big one. It usually means better work, less time to sell it, and quotes that arrive assuming you will not know the difference.
Talk About Your Site →Small businesses usually get offered one of two bad deals.
Ask three companies for a website and the replies tend to land at opposite ends, with nothing sensible in between.
The agency quote
A figure with a discovery phase, a strategy document and a project manager attached, for a business that needs half a dozen pages and a way to be contacted.
None of it is dishonest. It is just built for a company with a marketing department, and you are being asked to pay for the parts of it you will never use.
Priced for someone else's problem.
The cheap build
A template with your logo dropped in, three stock photographs of people who do not work for you, and a contact form nobody checks.
It gets you a website in the sense that a URL exists. It rarely gets you anything you would happily hand somebody a card for.
Cheap because it is not really for you either.
The useful answer is in the middle and it is not complicated. The same standard of build as anyone else gets, covering only as much ground as you actually need, at a price published before you ask. Those figures are on web design prices.
Small businesses people come to, or come back to.
- Salons, barbers and treatment rooms
- Shops and independent retailers
- Clinics, therapists and practitioners
- Consultants and advisers
- Studios, instructors and class-based businesses
- Small practices and one-person professional firms
Examples of who this suits, not a client list. The thread running through them is that your customers either come to where you are or deal with you directly, and the website is the thing that decides whether they bother. If you work out of a van, price by the job and do the work at the customer's place, then websites for trades is the page written for you. It covers what happens to an enquiry while your hands are full, which is a different problem from this one.
The worries worth saying out loud.
These come up in nearly every first conversation, and they are all reasonable. It is easier to answer them here than to pretend nobody thinks them.
- That you will be quoted an agency figure with a discovery phase attached, for a business that needs four pages and a booking link.
- That the cheap option produces something you would be embarrassed to put on a card.
- That you will be sold things you do not need yet, because it is easier to sell than to ask.
- That nobody will explain what you are actually buying until after you have agreed to it.
- That being small is treated as a reason to be given less thought rather than less work.
What we build and how it is put together is covered on web design in Aberdeen. If you already have a site and the question is whether to fix it or start again, that is usually the cheaper conversation and worth having first.
For a small business the website has one main job.
It has to make somebody comfortable enough to take the next step, which for most of these businesses is booking a time, walking in, or sending a message they expect an answer to. That is a lower bar than most websites aim at and a harder one than most of them clear.
Being small is an advantage here, not a handicap. You can put a real photograph of the actual place on the page. You can say who somebody will be dealing with by name. You can answer the awkward question about price honestly instead of hiding it behind a form. Larger competitors mostly cannot do any of that, and it is the part customers respond to.
If the thing you need is somewhere to take bookings or questions properly rather than a plain contact box, that is enquiry and quote systems.
Three fixed project prices, published in full, with no separate small-business rate and nothing added once we know what you do.
See Website Prices →What small businesses ask first.
Am I too small for you?
Almost certainly not. One person with a room and a diary is a normal size for us to work with. The build is the same standard whether you are one person or nine, because the site has the same job to do either way. What changes is how much ground it has to cover, and that is what the three published prices are for.
Do I get a cheaper, cut-down version because I am small?
No, and you should be wary of anyone offering one. The smallest of our three scopes is a professional website, not a stripped one. Where it costs less is that it covers less ground, not that it is built to a lower standard.
I am a plumber. Is this the right page for me?
Probably not. If you work from a van, price by the job and do the work at your customer’s place, our websites for trades page is written for exactly that and covers the things this one does not, like what happens to an enquiry while your hands are full. Same standards, different problem.
What does it cost?
Three fixed project prices, all published in full on our web design prices page, so you can work out where you sit before speaking to anyone. There is no small-business rate and no quiet uplift once we know what you do.
Tell us how small, and what you actually need.
We will tell you which of the three scopes fits, including when it is the cheapest one, and whether you need a new site at all. Plenty of people are better off fixing what they have, and that is a perfectly good answer for us to give.
Talk About Your Site →Tell us what you do and who you do it for.
What the business is, how people currently get in touch, and what the website does or does not do now. That is enough for a straight answer.
- 07577 796931
- lee@westhillai.com
- Westhill, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire
Being found is a separate job, covered on SEO. If you would rather see who you would be dealing with first, that is about us, and contact has every way to reach us in one place.