Questions to ask a web designer, with the answers
The same five questions come up on almost every call, in almost the same order. Here are the answers, with the prices written down.
Adam Roe
The short answer
The questions arrive in the same order nearly every time: what a package includes, what it costs, whether WordPress counts as design or development, whether anyone needs Figma, and whether being local matters. The honest answers are below, with prices you can check before you ring anybody.
On this page
Most people asking about web design in Milton Keynes ask the same five things, and usually in the same order. What is actually in a package. What it costs. Whether WordPress counts as design or as development. Whether they need a Figma file. And whether it matters that the person building it lives nearby.
I live and work here, so I hear these on the phone fairly often, and the short version of how I work is on the page for web design in Milton Keynes. This is the longer version, with the prices written down so you can check them before you ring anybody, me included.
None of it is complicated. It only feels that way because the usual answer is “it depends”, and then nobody says what it depends on.
Free checklist, no email needed Comparing web design quotes: what to ask before you choose. For a small business collecting quotes for a website, from any supplier. What each quote should name, what is usually left out of it, and the questions that make two very different numbers comparable. Download the checklist
What is a web design package, and what is in one?
A package is a fixed number of pages, on a platform you have chosen, with a set list of jobs done to it before it goes live. The word “design” is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence, and pulling it apart is the fastest way to understand why two quotes for the same site can be a thousand pounds apart.
Three separate jobs are usually hiding in there.
The structure. Which pages exist, what each one is for, and how they sit together. This is the part that decides whether the site ever earns anything, and it happens before anyone opens a design tool. The sitemap is an SEO decision rather than a deliverable, and it is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to change later.
The look. Either a template adapted to your brand, or layouts drawn from scratch. Both are legitimate. One costs a good deal less.
The build. Turning that into a working site: your real content loaded in rather than placeholder text, forms that actually send somewhere you can read, a site that behaves on a phone, and the search basics done before launch instead of after.
A quote that names all three can be compared with another quote that names all three. A quote that says “five page website, £1,200” and stops cannot be compared with anything, and the difference is almost always the content and the search setup. It is worth asking, and nobody will mind you asking.
Three jobs in one package
A quote that names all three can be compared with another quote that names all three. The words, a keyword map and a Google Business Profile are usually quoted separately.
How much does web design cost in the UK?
I can only honestly tell you what mine costs, because everybody else’s number depends on how many people are sitting in the room when the work happens.
Mine is days of work at £400 a day, so every price below can be checked by counting days. No VAT is charged.
| The site | Squarespace or Wix | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| One page | £600 | £800 |
| Five pages | £1,200 | £1,600 |
| Ten pages | £2,000 | £2,600 |
WordPress costs more to build because somebody has to set the platform up rather than rent one that is already running. You get that back in what it can do later.
Then the things people usually add once they have thought about it:
| Added to a build | Price |
|---|---|
| Custom design in Figma, instead of a template | £200 per layout |
| Copywriting | £200 per page |
| Keyword map and on-page SEO for every page | £400 |
| Google Business Profile set up and linked | £200 |
| Service or area pages, up to five | £600 |
| Content moved from an old site | £400 per 25 pages |
And then there is the month after launch, which is the number people forget. A WordPress site needs hosting, which is £50 a month here with the updates, the daily backups and the certificate in it. Squarespace and Wix host themselves and bill you directly, from about £12 a month on Squarespace (Squarespace pricing, checked September 2026). Changes on any platform are £75 an hour, or a monthly plan with hours in it if there are going to be a lot of them.
So what actually moves the price is the number of pages, whether the design is drawn or adapted, and who writes the words. Not the town it is built in.
Is WordPress web design or development?
Both, and the question underneath it is usually “how much of this can I change myself afterwards”.
WordPress is software that runs your site. Somebody has to install it, choose or build the theme, set the pages up and keep it updated. That part is development. Once it is running, changing text and swapping photographs is your job, and that part feels like design. Neither word is wrong.
The split that actually costs money is a different one:
- Adapting a theme. Faster, cheaper, and genuinely fine for most small businesses. The theme has already solved the dull problems: the spacing, the phone layout, the bits that break when a heading runs to three lines.
- Building the layouts. More control, more days, and worth paying for when the site has to do something no theme does.
Squarespace and Wix take that decision away from you, because there you are always adapting a template. That is the entire point of them, and it is why they cost less to build on and less to run. It is also the thing people find frustrating three years later, which is a fair trade as long as somebody says it out loud at the start.
Is Figma good for web design, and do I need one?
Figma is a drawing tool, it is very good, and it is what most designers now use to show you a page before it exists.
You do not need one to get a website. You need one when the site has to look like nothing else on the platform, when several people have to agree on the look before anyone builds anything, or when a design agency is drawing it and somebody else is building it. That last one is common, and it works well.
If you already have a Figma file, bring it. Building from a design that has been signed off is a normal way to work and it usually saves a round of changes, because the argument about the look has already happened.
If you do not have one, a template adapted to your brand is not second best. Custom layouts are £200 each here, and a five page site is usually three of them, so it is a real decision rather than a rounding error. Spend it where the site has to be different, and save it where it does not.
Does it matter that the designer is local?
Less than people expect, and I would rather say that than sell you a benefit that is not really there.
The build is remote work. It happens exactly the same way whether I am in Bletchley or in Bristol. I spent five years at a remote agency, finishing as Website and SEO Manager, so working with people I am not sitting next to is the normal case for me rather than the exception.
Where being nearby genuinely helps is the first conversation, and the awkward one. A kick-off where everybody argues about which pages exist goes better in a room than on a call. So does the meeting where the scope has changed and somebody has to say so. I will come to you for those, anywhere in Milton Keynes and the towns around it, Bletchley, Newport Pagnell, Wolverton, Buckingham, Northampton, Bedford, Luton and Aylesbury included, at no extra cost.
What local should not mean is a different price. There is no local discount here and no London premium.
One thing worth knowing if you are a business in Milton Keynes specifically: most of your visibility in local search will come from your Google Business Profile rather than from the website itself. Setting that up properly, with the right service areas on it, is half a day of work and it often does more for a local business than another page of copy. It is £200 as part of a build, and it is on the list of extras above for exactly that reason.
What moves the price
The number of pages, whether the design is drawn or adapted, and who writes the words. Location changes nothing, because the build is remote work either way.
What a build with me looks like
Everything above is general. This part is specific, because it is what you would actually be buying.
- A fixed price before anything starts. You get a reply within 12 working hours, and a written scope with a price inside 2 working days of the call. If the work cannot be pinned down, it is £400 a day, or £600 for evenings and weekends.
- Four platforms: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix and Shopify. I will tell you which one suits how you work, and the answer is usually driven by who is going to look after updates rather than by what the site looks like.
- The domain stays registered in your name. Always, whoever hosts the site, and whatever happens later.
- A handover you can actually use, with a written guide built around the pages you will really change, not a tour of every menu.
- Afterwards is optional. Hosting a WordPress site is £50 a month. Changes anywhere are £75 an hour, or a monthly plan if there will be enough of them to bother. The website handover checklist is the same list I work through at the end of a build, whether or not you stay.
Before you ask
Questions people ask.
01 How long does a five page website take?
About four working days of my time, spread over three or four weeks. The days are the easy part to predict. What sets the calendar is how quickly the words and the photographs arrive, because a build stops dead without them. If you have your content ready before we start, three weeks is realistic. If you are writing it as we go, plan for six and nobody will be disappointed.
02 Who writes the words for the pages?
You do, or a copywriter does, and I will tell you which one I think you need. I will put the words up, format them, cut them where a phone makes them unreadable, and say when a page is not answering the question it was built to answer. Deciding what the business actually says about itself is not a job to hand to somebody who met you last Tuesday. If you would rather not, copywriting is £200 a page.
03 Do I need a Figma design before you start?
No. Most small business sites are a template adapted to your brand, and that is not a downgrade. You need a design file when the site has to look like nothing else on the platform, or when several people have to agree on the look before a line is built. If you already have one from a designer, bring it, because building from a signed-off design usually saves a round of changes.
04 Does a website package include the search setup, or is that extra?
The basics are in it: one page per thing you sell, sensible titles, the site readable by Google, and a sitemap that makes sense. A keyword map with a target for every page, internal links and schema is £400 on top, and a Google Business Profile set up and linked is £200. I separate them because plenty of sites do not need the second half yet, and I would rather say so than bundle it.
If you are holding two quotes that do not look like the same job, they probably are not, and it is usually the content and the search setup that differ.
Tell me what you are trying to build and I will put the pages and the price in writing within two working days.
adamroe.