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Web design in Watford, with prices you can see.

Most agencies make you book a call before they will tell you a number. We do it the other way round: here are the packages and the prices, so you can decide whether we are in your budget before you spend a minute on the phone.

Get a quoteSee all prices
From £750
The Lister Institute website we rebuilt: a charity home page with scientists in a laboratory and clear routes to Fellowships, Studentships and Grants
The Lister Institute

Web design packages and prices

Every price below is a fixed starting point, confirmed after a free 30-minute discovery call. No hourly billing, no scope creep you did not agree to.

  • Starter

    Up to 5 hand-coded pages, local SEO foundation, contact form

    from£750

    For new and small businesses that need a fast, credible presence. We handle updates for you; there is no self-editing CMS at this tier.

  • Standard

    Up to 10 pages, a blog or news page you edit yourself

    from£1,500

    For growing businesses that want to post news, offers or articles without calling us.

  • Growth

    10-20 pages, CMS, blog, lead forms

    from£3,500

    For established firms that need to publish and capture leads themselves.

  • Premium

    Custom CMS, integrations, design system

    from£6,500

    For businesses with real complexity: portals, integrations and custom features.

Starter is a hand-coded brochure site with a local SEO foundation that we keep updated for you; there is no self-editing CMS, so changes come through us or one of our monthly plans. Standard adds pages and a blog or news page you edit yourself. Growth is where you get a full CMS to edit the whole site yourself, along with the extra pages and proper lead capture. If your project sits between two tiers, we quote it there rather than rounding you up to the next one. Need more pages? £75 each, one-off. Booking systems are quoted separately, on top of the website: we can connect the one you already use or build one, as we did for Pilates with Valerie. No VAT to add: the price you see is the price you pay.

Prefer not to pay up front? A Pay Monthly Website is the rented alternative: a £299 one-off setup builds the site, then we host, maintain and (on the higher tiers) rank it for you from £29 a month, with no minimum term. The site stays ours while you rent it. Buy it out for £550 at any time; the £299 setup plus the buy-out comes to £849, against a Starter build from £750, so if you already know you want to own it, buying up front costs less. Same studio, two ways to buy, one you own, one we run for you. A hand-coded site you own can use the same monthly plans with no setup fee, and a WordPress or other CMS site goes on a care plan; see all our prices.

What you get in every build

  • Bespoke design tailored to your brand. No templates, no recycled "Figma community" layouts.

  • Mobile-first build tested on real iOS, Android and tablet devices.

  • Performance-first code targeting sub-two-second loads on 4G and 100 on Lighthouse.

  • Accessibility baseline of WCAG 2.2 AA across every page, form and component.

  • Technical SEO included: clean semantic HTML, JSON-LD structured data, optimised meta and social previews.

  • AI-search readiness: entity-rich content, FAQ schema and crawlable structure so LLMs can cite you.

  • Analytics and tracking configured at launch, so you can measure enquiries from day one.

Proof it holds up under pressure

The clearest test of a build is a demanding client with no room for error. The Lister Institute is one of the UK's oldest medical research charities, funding early-career scientists through Fellowships, Studentships and Grants. Each funding stream needed its own clear route through the site, for applicants, reviewers and donors, and the whole thing had to meet AA accessibility and load in under two seconds on mobile. We rebuilt their web presence to do exactly that. It is the same standard we apply to a five-page brochure site for a Watford trade business; the scale changes, the craft does not. You can see more of that range across our recent work: from Profoot's product-led brochure site and Noise-x's manufacturer site, to the enthusiast-native build for Tweaked Performance and the product catalogue for Becker Healthcare.

Platforms we build on

  • WordPress, for marketing teams who need full visual editing control.

  • Astro, for performance-critical brochure sites, blogs and marketing sites.

  • Next.js, for React-based sites and web apps that need dynamic, interactive features.

  • Shopify, for product-first e-commerce brands.

  • Bespoke, when none of the above fits, typically client portals, SaaS and CRMs.

Who this is for

Our typical web design client is a Hertfordshire business that is serious about its next stage of growth and frustrated that its current site is embarrassing, slow, unmeasurable, or all three. That might be a sole trader who needs a credible first site, or an established firm replacing one that has fallen behind. What they have in common is caring about the result, not the size of their turnover. We are based in Watford and cover every Hertfordshire postcode in person or remotely.

What fast and accessible actually mean

Those two words get thrown around a lot, so here is what they mean in practice. Fast means your site shows its main content in under two seconds on a mid-range phone on 4G, and passes all three of Google's Core Web Vitals: how quickly the main content appears, how quickly the page responds when someone taps, and whether the layout jumps around as it loads. Speed is not vanity. It is the single most controllable ranking and conversion factor you have, and most small-business sites fail it badly. Accessible means the site works for someone using a screen reader, navigating by keyboard, or turning up the contrast, tested against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard on every page and every form. It widens your audience, it is a legal expectation for many businesses, and the same clean, semantic markup that helps a screen reader also helps Google and the AI crawlers understand your pages. We build both in from the start rather than bolting them on at the end, because retrofitting either one later costs far more than doing it right the first time.

How a project actually runs

Every build follows the same shape, and you always know which stage you are in.

  1. Discovery. A free 30-minute call, in person at our Watford studio or over video, where we work out what the site has to do, who it is for, and what success looks like in enquiries or sales. You leave with a fixed price and a clear scope, not a vague "it depends".

  2. Design. We design the key pages first, in the browser or in Figma, so you are reacting to something real rather than a mood board. We iterate until the layout and the look are right, then lock them.

  3. Build. We build the whole thing on your chosen platform, wire up forms, analytics and structured data, and test it on real phones, tablets and screen readers, not just a desktop browser.

  4. Launch and aftercare. We handle the go-live, the redirects and the Search Console setup, then support you free for 30 days while the dust settles. The person who briefed the project is the person who built it and the person you email afterwards.

Do you even need a rebuild?

Not every tired website needs replacing, and we will tell you when yours does not. Sometimes the honest answer is a day of performance and accessibility fixes on the site you already have, not a five-figure rebuild you do not need yet. We audit what you have first, look at whether the foundations are sound, and only recommend starting again when the current build is actively costing you: too slow to pass Core Web Vitals, impossible for your team to edit, or built on something insecure that nobody maintains any more. A rebuild is the right call often enough. But "the agency said we needed a new site" should never be the whole reason you got one.

Why brief a Watford studio

What you get from us that a bigger London agency will not offer is direct access to the person doing the work. No account manager relaying messages, no junior learning on your budget. You brief a senior developer, that developer builds your site, and you deal with the same person for the life of the project. Because we are in Watford we can meet you, and because we cover every Hertfordshire postcode we understand the market you are selling into, whether that is the St Albans professional scene, the Hemel business parks or the trades around Watford itself. For a local business, that combination is how projects stay on scope and actually get finished.

Copy and content

Design is only half of a page; the words do the selling. SEO-ready copywriting is an option on every project, written to rank and to read like a human wrote it, not stuffed with keywords. If you would rather write your own or bring your own copywriter, that works too. We will lay the pages out around your content and tell you honestly where it is letting the design down.

Local tip: if you trade in Watford, St Albans, Hemel or any other Hertfordshire town, ask about our local landing page package, a proven way to rank for the "near me" searches in your trade, like "plumber near me" or "accountant St Albans", across multiple postcodes.

Frequently asked questions

Last reviewed: September 2026

How much does a website actually cost?

A Starter build is from £750: up to 5 hand-coded pages with a local SEO foundation and a contact form, updated by us rather than through a self-editing CMS. A Standard build is from £1,500: up to 10 pages with a blog or news page you edit yourself. A 10 to 20 page Growth site that you edit yourself, with a CMS, blog and lead forms, starts from £3,500. A Premium build with a custom CMS, integrations and a bespoke design system starts from £6,500, and larger platforms run higher. Every quote is fixed after a free 30-minute discovery call, so there are no hourly surprises. No VAT to add.

Do you design in WordPress or something custom?

Both. We pick the right tool for your business: WordPress if your team needs full editing control, Astro or a static build if performance is the priority, Next.js if you need a dynamic, app-like site. We are not locked into one platform.

Will my site work on mobile?

Every site we build is mobile-first and tested on real iOS and Android devices. Most local searches happen on a phone, so we design the mobile layout first and the desktop layout second.

Will my site load quickly?

Yes. Every site we ship targets under two seconds Largest Contentful Paint on 4G mobile and passes all three Core Web Vitals. Our own site scores 100 on Google PageSpeed, and we hold client sites to the same bar.

What happens after launch?

Every site comes with 30 days of free post-launch support. After that, a hand-coded site can go on one of our monthly plans, with no setup fee because you already own the site, and a WordPress or other CMS site goes on a care plan. Or just pay ad-hoc for updates at £30 per 30 minutes. Your choice, and you own the site either way on a one-off build.

Is a one-off build the same as a Pay Monthly Website?

No, they are two different ways to buy. A one-off build on this page is a website you own outright: you pay once, the site and its code are yours, and you can host it wherever you like. A Pay Monthly Website is the rented alternative, where we build the site and then host, maintain and, on the higher tiers, rank it for a monthly fee with no large sum up front. You can buy a rented site out for £550 at any time. Same studio and same build quality; the difference is owning it versus a managed monthly service.

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Where we work

We run one studio in Watford and cover every Hertfordshire postcode in person or remotely. Pick your town for a page tuned to that local market.

Web design across Hertfordshire

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Or call us directly on 07979 911138