01 THE CALL
A call. Free.
Fifteen minutes. What you do, what’s wrong with the site you’ve got, what you’re hoping changes. If it’s obviously not a fit, I’ll say so on that call rather than waste a visit.
PRICING
I can’t price your website today. Neither can anyone else.
They just don’t tell you that. A number given before anyone has seen how you work is a guess dressed as a quote — and guesses get corrected later, upwards.
Only template agencies can price a website upfront.
That isn’t a criticism of them. It’s arithmetic.
If every site is the same site with different colours, the price is knowable in advance, because the work is knowable in advance. Three hundred pounds, or three thousand, for the same theme with your logo on it. Fair enough — and if that’s what you want, there are plenty of people who’ll do it well.
But you’re not buying a theme. You’re buying a site built from how your business actually works: what you make, who chooses you and why, the words your customers use, the things you do that nobody else in your area does. None of that is visible from a price list. Most of it isn’t visible from a phone call.
So a firm quoting you before they’ve been to see you is doing one of two things. Either they’re selling you something standard, or they’re guessing — and a guess that turns out low doesn’t get absorbed. It gets recovered, in extras, in change requests, in the things you assumed were included.
I’d rather find out what the job is, then tell you what it costs, and then not move.
You’ll have a number before anything is built. It just isn’t the first thing.
02 ON SITE
Time on site. Free.
I come to you. How the work gets done, what your customers say about you, the words they use. Usually more than one visit, because the useful things surface late.
03 THE SCOPE
A written scope. Free.
Everything the job includes, in plain English, on paper. Pages, functionality, who provides what, how long it takes. You read it. You disagree with parts of it. We change them.
04 THE PRICE
A fixed price against that scope.
One number, in writing, attached to a specific document. Not a range. Not an estimate. Not “starting from.”
05 YOURS TO KEEP
You decide.
The scope is yours to keep either way. If you take it to somebody else and get it built cheaper, that’s a legitimate outcome and I’d rather that than talk you into something.
Everything up to step 04 costs nothing, and there’s no obligation at the end of it. The first time money is mentioned, you already know exactly what you’d be buying.
These are the steps to the number, not the whole job — the build itself, from design directions to handover, runs on its own schedule on the process page.
Fixed means fixed.
The number attached to your scope is the number you pay. It doesn’t move because the job took longer than I thought, because something turned out harder than it looked, or because I underestimated. That risk is mine — that’s what pricing after the visits buys me, and it’s why I can carry it.
One thing changes the price: you changing the scope.
If you decide halfway through that you want an online shop, or a booking system, or four more pages, that’s a different job to the one we agreed. It goes through a written variation: what’s being added, what it costs, what it does to the timeline. You sign it or you don’t. Nothing gets added quietly and appears on an invoice later.
New ideas during the build are welcome — that’s the whole point of the open line, and most of the best things on the sites I’ve built arrived that way. Wanting them is not the same as being charged for them without being asked.
Where the money goes.
◆The visits
Time on site, more than once. This is the part nobody else does and it’s the reason the site ends up being about you rather than about your category.
◆The Word Survey
The phrases your customers actually use, including the ones nobody in your area is competing for. Listed in your scope, built into the site from day one.
◆Real directions
Two or three genuinely different designs before a line of code is written. You choose. You pull them apart. We go again if neither is right.
◆The build
Designed and coded from scratch. Fast, accessible, works properly on a phone, and built so search engines can find it.
◆The open line
Message me during the build, whenever, with whatever. There’s nobody in between — you get the person doing the work.
◆Ownership
Domain, code, content and accounts are yours on final payment. If you leave, you take everything. There is no version of working with me that leaves you stuck.
If you want a rough idea before committing to visits, ask on the call.
I won’t quote a number I can’t stand behind. But I will tell you, on that first fifteen minutes, whether what you’re describing is a small job or a large one, and roughly what range that puts you in — with the honest caveat that it’s a range, not a price, and it exists to save us both a wasted afternoon.
What I won’t do is send you a figure by email an hour after we’ve spoken and call it a quote.
MOST WEBSITES I BUILD LAND BETWEEN £3,000 AND £8,000 · CUSTOM SOFTWARE STARTS HIGHER
After launch.
Some clients want nothing further — the site is theirs, it works, that’s the end of it. That’s a perfectly good outcome and I don’t sell against it.
Ongoing changes to the site itself are quoted job by job, or covered by the retainer if that’s how we’ve set it up. Either way, in writing, before the work.
Others want the territory maintained: the words kept current, the Google Business Profile looked after, new content as the business changes. That’s a monthly arrangement, priced against what’s actually being done, cancellable with a month’s notice. No twelve-month tie-in, ever — Fault 02 exists for a reason.
A reduced rate, for a reason.
Talon Insights is new. I’m taking on a small number of projects at a reduced rate in exchange for a written case study and a review — same scope, same standard, same fixed price guarantee.
That’s a straightforward trade and I’d rather name it than dress it up: you get the work for less, I get proof that the work exists. When the case studies are written, the rate goes back up.
Questions.
Isn’t “no upfront price” just a way of charging more? +
The opposite, usually. Firms that quote blind price defensively — they pad the number to cover what they haven’t seen. I’ve seen the job before I price it, so there’s nothing to pad against.
What if the scope is wrong? +
Then we fix it before it’s signed, which is why you read it and argue with it. That’s the entire purpose of putting it in writing rather than describing it on a call.
What if I don’t like the designs? +
You see two or three, and if none is right we go again. The directions stage exists so that “I don’t like it” happens in week two rather than week eight.
Do you take deposits? +
Yes — a deposit on signing, then payments against milestones, with the balance on handover. All of it stated in the scope before you commit to anything.
What if I go elsewhere after the visits? +
Then you go elsewhere, and you keep the written scope. It cost you nothing and it’s a genuinely useful document to hand to whoever you use instead. I’d rather be the person who was straight with you than the person who tied you in.
Is this going to be expensive? +
It’s more than a template and less than an agency, because there’s no account manager, no office and no junior doing the work. What you’re paying for is the visits and the person building it being the same person you met.
Find out what it costs.
Start with fifteen minutes on the phone. If it sounds like a fit, I’ll come to you — and you’ll have a written scope and a fixed price before you’ve spent anything.
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