FAQs

The answer to that depends on what you need your website to do, or what sort of return you expect it to deliver. It’s surprising how many people ask this question without providing any information regarding their requirements to a web designer.

For a brand new bespoke design of a website for marketing purposes, with roughly 3-4 unique page designs based on content that you provide, prices start from £2,400 (incl. VAT). This includes the time it takes me to research your competitors, design something from scratch for your business, then build a bespoke WordPress theme for your website.

For eCommerce websites built on either Shopify or WordPress, prices start from £3,200 (incl. VAT).

Prices start from £900 for less bespoke websites, but again it all depends on what you need.

Without knowing anything about how your existing website was built and what you need me to do, it’s difficult to give a price for freelance design and development.

My hourly rate is £40 and there’s an initial minimum charge of £160 (4 hours) for new clients. This gives me time to familiarise myself with your website setup and make sure I don’t break something built by your previous website developer.

Unless we have an existing working relationship, I don’t often take on work from people with budgets lower than £900. Websites built for less than this are usually built by inexperienced web designers, or they’re generic sites that are pieced together with basic information that won’t really suit or benefit your business at all.

I’ve written a post about what to do when you can’t afford a web designer, so there might be some useful tips for you in there.

At the start of your website project I’ll require a 50% payment for the work upfront, regardless of the project size.

For website work quoted under £1000, a 50% invoice will be sent at the end when the agreed work is complete and the files are ready to be transferred.

Anything else will be invoice in 3 stages starting with a 50% invoice, then 30% when the design phase is complete (or development is 80% complete). The final 20% will be invoiced as the website is read to go live.

The answer to this question is usually no, sorry.

I don’t like cleaning up other developers’ messes. If you broke it yourself, or haven’t updated your WordPress plugins in years, you should probably reach out to your hosting provider and ask if they can restore the site from a backup.

Any brand materials you can provide at the start of the website project will help to get you online sooner. If all you have is a strong idea for now then that’s fine too, your website will just take a little longer to launch.

Branding

If you have brand guidelines or even just some logo files that a designer once sent you then I will need those. Logo files are best in vector formats (svg, ai, pdf, eps), but if you don’t have any of those then the highest resolution version will have to do. Any branded marketing materials you have would also help me to keep the design in line with your brand.

Sitemap & Content

It’s handy to have a sitemap and rough set of documents written for the pages you need on the website before I start designing. This enables me to design the site around your content and pull out key messages, rather than making assumptions and using nonsense placeholder text. The more comprehensive this is, the better suited the design will be to your final wording.

Photos

High quality photos really help to sell your business to potential customers. Any high resolution photos you can provide that are unique to your business will really make the website stand out. If you don’t have these though, don’t worry. There are plenty of stock photography websites out there where you can purchase images.

Once we’ve had a chance to discuss what you need from your website and we’re ready to work together, I can send over a starting invoice and block out time in my schedule. Depending on when the payment is made, I’ll usually start a week or so after the invoice is paid.

On average, a marketing website design built on WordPress would take roughly 4-8 weeks to complete. Website builds are more successful and ready to launch sooner when there is a good level of communication both ways throughout the project.

If your website design is more complicated, or you need eCommerce functionality then this can take 12 weeks or more to complete.

Yes, if you have a web developer already then I’d be happy to design the visuals for your website. We may need to discuss the format you’d like these to be delivered in as not all design software is the same.

Prices start from £1,200 (incl. VAT) for 3 full page designs.

Yes, I often work with other freelance designers to build website designs they’ve created. I also work with design and marketing agencies to build bespoke WordPress and Shopify themes based on the designs by their teams.

For bespoke WordPress and Shopify development based on another designer’s work, prices start from £1,600 (incl. VAT).

Yes, I regularly work with design and marketing agencies as a freelance web designer. Around 50% of the work I take on involves building bespoke WordPress and Shopify themes based on designs by other teams.

If you’re based in Liverpool, or within a 15 mile radius of Crosby, I’d be happy to meet you for a coffee to chat about your website.

I’m also happy to speak over video if you’re further away and want to see that I’m a real person.

As a freelance web designer I don’t offer website hosting myself, but I do have some hosts that I recommend to people for their WordPress websites.

These are the hosting providers I recommend:

• Siteground
• Krystal
• 34SP

I’m sure there are plenty of decent hosts out there, but these ones I’ve worked with and have found are great in terms of tools, speed, backups, helpful articles and customer support.

Shopify websites are hosted on Shopify’s servers, so your hosting is included in their monthly fees.

You will have complete control of the content on your website, including photos, text, pages, blog posts and things like social media links or contact information.

Page layouts, website colours, branding and overall aesthetics will not be editable within your website’s admin area.

If you’d like to keep me on retainer as a freelance web designer then we can definitely discuss this. There are different price points depending on how much work you would need each month, so just let me know what you expect you’ll need.

As a freelance web designer, writing copy isn’t a service I can provide for everyone, but I’m happy to discuss what you need for your website.

I often work with freelance copywriters and search engine specialists on larger projects. If I’m not able to write your content I can most likely connect you with someone who can.

My freelance portfolio doesn’t showcase everything I’ve ever made, so it’s understandable that some people might wonder if I can design websites for them.

Over the past 12 years I’ve worked with hundreds of different business owners on their websites. If you don’t see your industry covered on my website, don’t let that put you off. It’s always better to reach out and get a ‘no’ than move on and miss out on a ‘yes’.

I didn’t design every website in my portfolio but I had a hand in building all of them.

Some websites are 100% my work, while others were designed by other people who had skills better suited to the design style than I did.

If you read the descriptions for each project you’ll learn what my role was in the project.

I’ve been building websites professionally since 2010, but I’ve been building them for fun for over 20 years.

WordPress and Shopify.

WordPress is a very secure CMS if you have someone checking in and making updates regularly. The longer a website is online without updating the system and plugins, the bigger the risk that someone will be able to compromise the security of that website.

There are a number of ways to strengthen WordPress against attacks using plugins to protect you against spam, brute-force attacks, unwanted login attempts and other nefarious activity. Whenever I build a website using WordPress, I always make it a priority to install a number of these plugins to keep your website secure.