- A standard small business website with us is live in under a week from the day you say yes, depending on the build. Day zero, the free pages, costs nothing and takes a few days before that.
- About an hour of your time across the week, mostly answering questions and reading a link on your phone.
- What makes a build slip: content that isn’t ready, decisions that wait, and domain logins nobody can find. All three are fixable before day one.
“How long will it take?” is usually the second question after price, and it gets the same non-answer: it depends. For a shop, a members’ area or an app, it genuinely does, and those are scoped and dated in writing before they start. For the site most small businesses need — up to ten pages, a form, the search basics — it does not depend much at all. Here is the week, day by day.
Before day one: the free pages
Most of our builds start before anyone has agreed to anything. You send a link to your site, or just your Instagram, through a short form. Within a few days you get a few of your pages rebuilt properly, as a real link, with a short note on what we changed and why.
That step does two things. It lets you judge the work before you pay for it. And it means the build itself starts from something you have already seen and reacted to, which is most of the reason the week holds.
The week
You say yes to the free pages. We agree one price in writing: from £175 for a rebuild, £215 from nothing, with anything extra named before it is built. We send a short list of what we need from you.
Gathering. Your words, your photos, your prices, your opening hours, the services you actually want to be found for. If you have a site already, we take an inventory of every page on it, including the old ones nobody links to any more. If you are starting from nothing, this is where the structure and the brand get decided with you.
Your time: the bulk of your hour. A conversation, a few answers, a folder of photos.
The build. Hand-coded, mobile-first, no page builder underneath it. Every page gets a title, a description and proper headings. The enquiry form is wired straight to your inbox. Your business details are written into the page in the format search engines read.
Your time: none. You may get a question or two by message.
Review. You get a private link and read it on your phone, which is where most of your customers will. You tell us what is wrong. Nothing is precious; a wrong price, a photo you hate, a sentence that doesn’t sound like you all get changed.
Your time: twenty minutes with the link and a reply.
Changes and checks. Your revisions go in. Then the checks nobody sees: every form tested from a different device and a different email address, every link clicked, every image loading, the phone number tappable, the sitemap present, the “hide from search engines” setting off.
If your old site had pages at addresses the new one won’t, each one gets a redirect to its closest equivalent. That is what keeps your Google history intact through a rebuild; we wrote it up in will I lose my Google ranking if I redesign my website?
Go live. One record on your domain is pointed at the new site. Your email records are not touched, so your email carries on exactly as before. The old site stays up until the new one is clearly live everywhere. Analytics and Search Console are set up in your name. Then the build is invoiced, once you have seen it and signed it off. You don’t pay the balance until you love it.
What we need from you, and when
Almost every build that runs over does so for one of three reasons, and all three are on your side of the table. Knowing that in advance removes most of them.
- Content that isn’t ready. Photos still on someone’s phone, prices that are “about to change”, a paragraph about the business that nobody has written. Send what you have on day one, even if it is rough. Rough and early beats polished and late every time.
- Decisions that wait. Which services get their own page. Which phone number. Whether the old blog comes across. Each one is a two-minute answer, and each unanswered one is a day the build sits still.
- Domain logins nobody can find. The domain was registered in 2017 by a nephew, or the old web person, or an email address that no longer exists. Finding out who holds it on launch day is the single commonest reason a launch moves. Check it before day one. If it is not in your name, getting it there is worth doing regardless of who builds the site.
What takes longer, and why
Under a week covers the standard site. A bigger site, or a lot of content to move across, can take a little longer, and you get that date in writing before anything starts. Some things are scoped separately, with their own dates, because they are software rather than pages.
- Booking and payments. A live calendar with your rules, confirmations and reminders, payment on the site without a third party’s fee. Priced and dated up front.
- A shop, a members’ area, or a second language. Each adds work and testing. Each is agreed in writing before it starts.
- Apps. A different process with two app stores and their review queues in it. Our own apps are live on both; the timeline for one is a separate conversation.
The honest rule is that anything above the starting price comes with its own date, and you know both before a line is built.
After launch
The first year’s hosting and SSL are in the build price, and if something breaks while the hosting is with us, it is on us. From year two you choose how much you want to think about it: Care at £99 a year keeps it live and safe, Found at £39 a month keeps it current and found, Growing at £79 a month adds a new page every month. Plenty of businesses only need Care.
Day zero
The week starts on the day you say yes. The few days before it, the free pages, cost nothing and commit you to nothing. Send a link, read what comes back, and decide from something real.
Euan RobertsonFounder of AIORCA LTD. Builds every site and app himself — websites, platforms and three apps on both stores — for small businesses in Lanarkshire, Glasgow and worldwide. About