Choosing a web developer comes down to four questions: who will actually build it, what happens the day after launch, who owns the site when it is finished, and whether they will tell you when you are wrong. Price is the easiest thing to compare and the least useful.
I have spent the better part of a decade building websites in and around Cheltenham, and a growing share of my work is now picking up sites that somebody else built and nobody maintained. The pattern is consistent enough to be worth writing down.
Ask who is actually going to build it
At an agency you will usually meet a salesperson, be handed to an account manager, and have the work done by whoever is free that week. None of that is dishonest. It is just how the model works, and it means the person who understood your business is rarely the person typing the code.
It is a fair question to ask directly: will the person I am speaking to now be the person doing the work? If the answer is no, ask who will be, and whether you can speak to them before you commit.
Ask what happens the day after launch
This is where most quotes go quiet. A website is not a thing you buy once. WordPress core, your theme and every plugin ship updates more or less weekly, and the gap between an update being released and it being applied is the gap attackers work in.
So ask what the arrangement is afterwards. Is there a support period? What does it cover? What does it cost once it ends? A developer who has not thought about month thirteen is telling you something useful about month thirteen.
Ask who owns it when it is finished
You should own your domain, your hosting account, your content and your site files. Not your developer, on your behalf, as a convenience.
The convenience version is fine right up until the relationship ends, at which point it is the difference between moving on and starting again. Ask to be named as the registrant on your own domain. Ask whether you will have your own hosting login. If a builder is proprietary and you cannot take the site elsewhere, ask what happens if you want to leave, and get the answer before you sign rather than after.
Ask for a straight answer about what you do not need
A good sign is someone talking you out of something. Most small business sites do not need a custom booking system, a membership area, an app, or a redesign every two years. Plenty get sold all four.
I turn down work fairly regularly, usually because what somebody is asking for will not fix the problem they actually have. If your enquiries have dried up, a new homepage is rarely the cause and rarely the cure.
Does local actually matter?
Less than local firms like to claim, and more than remote ones admit.
It is genuinely easier to understand a business when you have stood in it, and easier to trust someone you have met. For a builder, a garden centre or a restaurant, an hour on site is worth three on a call. But the work itself is remote work, and has been for years. If the fit is right, distance has never been the real problem. I meet clients over coffee in Cheltenham because it is useful, not because the code requires it.
What it costs around Gloucestershire
Most UK freelancers charge somewhere between £40 and £80 an hour. Agencies cost more, because there are more people to pay. Neither figure tells you much on its own, because the same site can be quoted at wildly different scopes.
What is worth comparing is what the quote actually includes: the number of pages, whether content and images are your job or theirs, how many rounds of changes are allowed, what happens after launch, and whether hosting and a domain are inside or outside the number. Two quotes that look £1,000 apart are often quoting different things entirely.
The cheapest quote is frequently the most expensive one, because the gap gets made up later in changes that were never in scope. Ask for the scope in writing. Anyone reputable will already have it.
Common questions
How long should a small business website take?
For a straightforward brochure site, a few weeks is normal. The build is rarely the slow part. Waiting for content is, which is why a good developer will ask for your text and photographs early and keep asking.
Should I use WordPress, Wix or Shopify?
WordPress if you want to own and extend it, Shopify if you are primarily selling products and want the commerce side handled, Wix if the site is simple and you would rather not think about maintenance at all. I hold Wix and Shopify partner accounts as well as building WordPress, largely so I can say that honestly rather than selling you the only thing I know.
Do I need a care plan, or can I just update it myself?
You can do it yourself, and some people genuinely do. It takes a regular half hour, a willingness to check the site afterwards, and somewhere to restore from when an update breaks something. If that sounds like a thing you will still be doing in eight months, do it yourself. If it does not, a care plan exists for exactly that reason.
What if I already have a site and just need it fixed?
Most of the sites I look after were built by somebody else. A rebuild is not always the answer and I will tell you when it is not. If the site has been compromised rather than merely neglected, that is a different job and should be dealt with first.
If you are weighing up quotes
Send me what you have been quoted and what you are trying to achieve, and I will tell you whether it looks sensible, including when the answer is that somebody else’s quote is the better one. That costs nothing and it is usually a shorter conversation than people expect. Get in touch.