Web
Website Design and Development
Web design and website development from one team — marketing sites, corporate sites, portals and web applications, designed around how your business actually sells.
The short answer
What is website design & development?
Website design and development covers everything between a blank domain and a live, maintainable site: the research that decides what the pages need to say, the interface design, the front-end and back-end engineering, the content management system your team edits through, and the analytics and search groundwork that let you tell whether any of it is working.
Most agencies split this. Web designers produce the visuals, website developers build them, and the two rarely sit in the same conversation — which is why so many finished sites differ from the design that was signed off. Our designers and developers work as one team, so what gets drawn is what gets built.
We build corporate and marketing sites, startup sites, landing pages, member portals, CMS-driven publishing sites and custom web applications.
Scope
What we build
Web design
Interface and visual design for the whole site — hierarchy, states, responsive behaviour and a design system, not a set of flat mockups.
Website redesign
Rebuilding an existing site without losing the content, URLs and rankings that were already working.
Corporate and marketing sites
Multi-page sites with a clear structure, editable content and room to add sections without a rebuild.
Custom web applications
Authenticated products with real business logic — dashboards, calculators, booking flows, member areas.
CMS-driven sites
WordPress or a headless CMS, modelled so editors work in real content blocks instead of raw HTML.
Landing pages
Single-purpose pages for a campaign or launch, built to be measured and iterated quickly.
Portals and directories
Search, filtering, listings and account areas, structured so they stay fast as records grow.
Re-platforming
Moving an existing site to a new stack with its URLs, rankings and content preserved.
Why teams call us
Business problems this solves
If more than two of these describe your situation, the problem is usually structural rather than cosmetic.
- A site that looks acceptable but produces almost no enquiries
- Content nobody can update without a developer
- Pages that load slowly on mobile networks
- A structure that has grown page by page with no logic left in it
- A rebuild that lost the search visibility the old site had
- Design that breaks the moment content is longer than the mockup
How it works
Our process
- 01
Audit and discovery
What the current site does, where traffic and enquiries come from, and what the business needs the next one to do.
- 02
Architecture
Sitemap, URL structure, templates and the content model — agreed before any visual design.
- 03
Design system
Type scale, colour, spacing, components and states, so every page is built from the same parts.
- 04
Build
Front end, CMS integration and back end, reviewed on a staging URL you can click through.
- 05
Pre-launch QA
Cross-browser, responsive, accessibility, redirects, structured data and performance budgets.
- 06
Launch and iterate
Go-live, analytics verification, then improvements based on what real traffic does.
What you get
Deliverables and features
Deliverables
- Responsive website across all breakpoints
- Design system and component library
- CMS with editor training and documentation
- Analytics and conversion tracking
- Structured data, sitemap and robots configuration
- Redirect map where URLs changed
- Source code and full handover
Features
- Server-rendered or statically generated pages for fast first paint
- Editable content blocks rather than fixed page templates
- Accessible navigation, forms and interactive components
- Image optimisation and modern formats
- Form handling with validation and spam protection
- Third-party integrations — CRM, payments, chat, marketing tools
Stack
Technologies we use
We choose tools for the next three years, not the next three months — and we document why, so your next developer is not guessing.
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- WordPress
- Headless CMS
- PostgreSQL
- Tailwind CSS
- Vercel
- AWS
How we think about it
Our approach
Design approach
Design starts with the content and the decision a visitor is trying to make, not with a homepage layout. We work through information architecture and wireframes before any visual design, so hierarchy is settled while it is still cheap to change. Every component is designed with its real states — empty, loading, error, long content, and the awkward case where a title runs to three lines.
Performance and security
Performance is a budget agreed at the start, not a clean-up task. That means server rendering or static generation where it suits the page, images sized and served in modern formats, fonts loaded without blocking, JavaScript kept to what the page genuinely needs, and no layout shift as things load. We verify Core Web Vitals on staging before launch rather than discovering them in Search Console afterwards.
Search considerations
Search behaviour is part of the architecture. URL structure, heading hierarchy, internal linking and structured data are decided during the build, and any change to an existing URL gets a redirect so the visibility you already have survives the move.
Budget
What drives the cost
We do not publish price ranges, because a number given before we understand the work is not a real one. These are the factors that actually move it.
- Number of unique page templates, not the number of pages
- How much content is written from scratch versus migrated
- Whether a CMS is needed, and how flexible editors need it to be
- Integrations with existing systems — CRM, ERP, payment, booking
- Whether an existing site has to be migrated with its URLs intact
- Ongoing support and iteration after launch
After a discovery conversation we give a fixed scope and a fixed number before any work begins.
Related
Services that go with this
Business Website Development
A business website has one job: turn the people who find you into conversations. We build sites for service companies, professional practices and B2B firms where that is the only measure that counts.
UI/UX Design
Research, information architecture, interface design and design systems. Decisions we can explain and you can defend — not decoration applied at the end.
SEO Services
Technical SEO, content architecture, structured data and Core Web Vitals — reported against enquiries and revenue rather than ranking screenshots.
Website Maintenance
Security updates, dependency hygiene, backups, monitoring and the small changes that keep accumulating. A site is a system that is running, not a project that finished.
Questions
Website Design & Development — frequently asked
What is the difference between a web designer and a web developer?
A web designer decides what the site looks like and how it behaves — layout, hierarchy, typography, colour, interaction and responsive behaviour. A website developer builds that in code, and handles the CMS, integrations, performance and security. Some people do both competently; most specialise. The important question is not which one you need, but whether the two work together — a design nobody costed and a build nobody reviewed is how sites end up different from what was approved.
Do you offer web design only, without development?
Yes. We can hand over a design system and specifications your own team or another developer can build from, and we stay available during the build because questions always come up. We will say if we think the split will cause problems.
Can we hire your web designers or developers for our own team?
Yes — as dedicated developers or an extended team working inside your process, rather than as a fixed-scope project. See hire developers.
How long does a website project take?
It depends almost entirely on the number of unique templates and how ready the content is. We give a realistic schedule after discovery, once the sitemap and content model are agreed — before that, any number would be a guess.
Do we need a CMS?
If your team will update content more than occasionally, yes. If the site is small and rarely changes, a CMS can add cost and maintenance for little return. We will tell you which case you are in.
Will a rebuild hurt our search rankings?
It can, if URLs change without redirects or content thins out. We inventory existing URLs first, map every change to a 301, keep the content that was earning traffic, and monitor after launch. Handled properly, a rebuild usually helps.
Can you work with our existing brand guidelines?
Yes. If you have a brand system we design within it. If you do not, or it only exists as a logo, we will define the parts a website needs — type scale, colour roles, spacing and component styles.
Who owns the code?
You do, on final payment. We hand over the repository, deployment configuration and documentation. Nothing is locked to us.
What happens after launch?
We offer maintenance and iteration — security updates, dependency hygiene, monitoring and ongoing improvements. See website maintenance.
Start here
Ready to talk about website design & development?
Tell us what you are trying to achieve and what you are working with. We will come back with an honest view of scope, approach and whether we are the right fit.