Everything You Need To Know

I mainly build professional websites for small businesses, particularly service businesses that need a clearer online presence, better search visibility and more opportunities to generate enquiries.

My standard plans cover one-page and five-page business websites, but I also take on larger websites, Shopify and ecommerce stores, client-supplied designs and more bespoke projects. If your project does not fit one of the standard plans, I can put together a tailored quote.

If you like my work but are not ready to commit to a full website, I can create a homepage demo first so you can see how I would approach your business.

The demo gives you a clear idea of the proposed design direction before you sign up. If you like what I create, we can move forward with the full project. If you decide it is not right for you, there is no obligation to continue.

The demo is a preview of the proposed direction rather than a completed website or final set of design or code files.

Most standard one-page and five-page websites take around 2–4 weeks from the Project Start Date to launch.

The exact timeframe depends on the size of the website, how quickly you provide any required information and feedback, and whether third-party setup is involved.

Larger websites, ecommerce stores and more bespoke projects may take longer. If that applies to your project, I will give you a realistic expected timeframe before work begins.

No. Professional website copywriting is included with my standard website plans.

I use the information you provide about your business, services, customers and goals to write clear, customer-focused website copy for you. You will have the opportunity to review everything before the website goes live.

Specialist legal wording, privacy policies, regulatory statements and industry-specific compliance wording are not included unless supplied or separately agreed.

Not on my managed website plans. I continue handling the hosting, routine edits, maintenance, technical issues, support and general management of the website after launch.

If you need to change a service, price, image, review, opening time or piece of text, you can simply send the change to me rather than having to learn how to edit the website yourself.

Unlimited routine edits cover the normal changes a business needs to keep its website accurate and up to date. This includes changes to text, images, prices, services, reviews, contact details, links, buttons and small styling elements.

You can simply message or email me with the changes you need and I will handle them for you.

Unlimited edits do not include new pages, complete page redesigns, major structural changes or substantial new functionality. Those can still be added, but may require a separate quote.

My standard website pricing is:

• Full Website: £119/month or £1,395 lump sum
• Growth SEO: £299/month for existing SemDev website clients
• Ecommerce, Shopify and custom projects: tailored quote

The monthly website plans have a 12-month minimum term and include ongoing hosting, routine edits, maintenance and support.

The £119/month Full Website Plan includes a complete five-page website and is suited to businesses that need dedicated pages for different services, information or search opportunities.

The plan includes:

• Bespoke design
• Development
• Professional copywriting
• SEO foundations
• Hosting and SSL
• Unlimited routine edits
• Technical maintenance
• Ongoing support
• Search visibility monitoring

There are no separate monthly hosting or maintenance charges on top of the advertised plan price.

Yes. There is no large website build fee to pay upfront on the monthly plans. Your first website payment is simply your first monthly subscription payment.

You can also ask me to create a homepage demo before you commit, so you can see the proposed design direction before signing up to the full project.

The main difference is how you pay for the website and how the ongoing service is structured.

With the monthly plan, there is no large upfront website cost. Your monthly payment covers the website itself as well as ongoing hosting, maintenance, unlimited routine edits, support and search monitoring.

With the lump-sum option, you pay for the website upfront and own the client-specific website once the project is completed and paid for. Ongoing hosting, edits and support are optional afterwards.

The monthly option is usually better for businesses that want the website continually managed for them. The lump-sum option is available for businesses that would rather purchase the website outright.

The standard monthly website plans have an initial 12-month minimum term.

After the first 12 months, the agreement continues on a rolling monthly basis and can be cancelled in accordance with the notice terms in your service agreement.

There is no requirement to sign another 12-month contract simply because the first year has ended.

Yes. The Full Website Plan has a 12-month minimum term. After completing the first 12 qualifying monthly payments, you become eligible to buy out ownership of the website early.

If you continue on the plan instead, ownership of the client-specific website transfers to you automatically after 24 qualifying monthly payments, with no additional buyout payment required.

Your managed subscription can continue after ownership transfers, but once you own the website you can also cancel the managed service and take the website elsewhere if you choose.

The exact ownership and intellectual-property terms are set out in your service agreement.

Yes. On the Full Website Plan, an early ownership buyout becomes available after you have completed the initial 12-month minimum term.

At the current £119/month pricing, the buyout is £807 after the 12th qualifying payment and reduces by £49 for each further qualifying monthly payment.

After the 24th qualifying payment, there is no buyout amount because ownership transfers automatically.

Your service agreement will confirm the applicable ownership and buyout terms before you sign up.

It depends on when you cancel.

During the initial 12-month minimum term, the remaining payments due under that minimum term still apply.

After the first 12 months, you can cancel subject to the notice terms in your agreement.

If you cancel before ownership has transferred and do not exercise an available buyout option, the website does not transfer with you and the managed website service ends.

Once ownership has transferred, cancelling the subscription does not take the website away from you. You keep the client-specific website and can arrange your own hosting and maintenance elsewhere.

Nothing needs to change unless you want it to.

Your £119/month managed website service can continue as normal, covering hosting, unlimited routine edits, maintenance, backups, technical support, search monitoring and ongoing website management.

The difference is that you now own the client-specific website.

If you later decide you no longer need me to manage it, you can cancel the ongoing service in accordance with the agreement and take the website elsewhere.

Additional standard website pages start from £70 as a one-off fee per page.

Once the page has been added to a managed website, routine future edits to that page are included in the normal unlimited-edits service.

More complex pages that require significant custom functionality, unusual layouts, large amounts of content or specialist development may require a separate quote.

Monthly website plans are paid through automatic recurring payments via Stripe.

Lump-sum and custom projects can be paid using the payment method agreed for the project, normally bank transfer or Stripe.

Any payment schedule for a larger or custom project will be confirmed before work begins.

My standard one-page and five-page business websites are custom-coded rather than built using drag-and-drop page builders.

This gives me much more control over the design, structure, responsive behaviour and performance of the website.

Not every project should be built in exactly the same way, though. If I am building an ecommerce store or another specialist project, I may use a platform such as Shopify where it provides the functionality the business actually needs.

The aim is to use the right approach for the project rather than forcing every website onto the same platform.

Custom coding gives me much more control over how the website is designed and built.

Instead of adapting your business to a pre-built template or relying on a large page-builder system, I can build the layout, structure and responsive behaviour around what your website actually needs.

It also allows me to keep the codebase lean, reduce unnecessary dependencies and optimise performance more precisely.

Page builders can be perfectly suitable for some projects, but for the standard business websites I specialise in, custom development gives me greater control over the final result.

Yes. If you already have established branding, I can design the website around your existing logo, colours, fonts and visual style so everything feels consistent.

If your branding is fairly basic, I can also develop a suitable visual direction for the website using the assets and information you already have.

The homepage demo is also a useful way to see how your existing brand could translate into a more polished website before committing to the full project.

You will have the opportunity to give feedback on the design and review the website before it goes live.

Some clients already have a clear idea of what they want, while others would rather give me the business information and let me lead the design process.

I am happy to work either way, but I will also make recommendations where I think a particular design or structure will work better for the website.

If you choose to have a homepage demo first, you can also see and assess the initial design direction before committing to the full project.

Yes. Your website can continue developing as your business changes.

Standard additional pages start from £70 each, and I can also quote separately for larger design changes, additional functionality, integrations or more substantial development work.

If your requirements become significantly more complex, I will explain the best way to approach the work rather than trying to force it into the unlimited-edits allowance.

Yes. Shopify and ecommerce projects are available as custom website projects rather than under my standard £79 and £119 business website plans.

For ecommerce, I generally use an established ecommerce platform such as Shopify because it already provides the functionality needed for products, payments, orders, inventory and store management.

I can help with the design, setup, development, customisation and overall structure of the store based on what the project requires.

Custom ecommerce projects are quoted individually.

The domain should belong to your business.

If you already have one, I can connect it to the new website. If you do not have one yet, I can help you choose and set it up.

Where possible, the domain should be registered in an account you control so you remain the owner of it regardless of what happens with your website service in the future.

I can handle the technical setup and connection for you.

Every standard SemDev website is built with SEO foundations in place from the beginning rather than treating SEO as something that gets added afterwards.

Depending on the project, this can include:

• Keyword research
• Search-focused page structure
• Professionally written search-focused copy
• Page titles and meta descriptions
• Clean URLs
• Technical SEO
• Schema markup where appropriate
• Internal linking
• Image optimisation
• Sitemap setup
• Indexing setup
• Google Search Console setup
• Local targeting where relevant
• Google Business Profile support for relevant local businesses
• Reasonable ongoing search visibility monitoring on managed plans

The aim is to launch the website with strong technical and on-page SEO foundations.

The standard website plans do not include a full active SEO campaign involving regular new content, ongoing competitor research, authority building and continuous expansion into new search opportunities. That is what Growth SEO is for.

Growth SEO is £299/month and is available to existing SemDev website clients who want me to actively work on growing their organic search visibility over time.

Instead of completing the exact same SEO checklist every month, I review the website's search performance, rankings, competitors, traffic and conversion data to identify where the next piece of work can have the greatest impact.

Depending on what the data shows, the work can include:

• Initial SEO audit and growth planning
• Ongoing keyword and competitor research
• Ranking monitoring
• Improving existing service and location pages
• Technical and on-page SEO improvements
• Indexing and schema improvements
• Internal linking improvements
• Up to one new SEO-focused page or substantial content piece per month
• Google Business Profile improvements
• Local SEO work
• Citation opportunities
• Genuine local and industry backlink opportunities
• Improvements to calls to action, forms, messaging and customer journeys
• Google Search Console monitoring
• Bing search monitoring
• Analytics and enquiry tracking
• AI search visibility monitoring and optimisation
• Monthly reporting on results, completed work and next priorities

The focus is on finding opportunities, implementing improvements and measuring what happens next rather than completing low-value SEO tasks simply because they are on a monthly checklist.

The SEO included with your website is about giving the site strong foundations.

That means the website is properly structured, technically sound, search-focused and set up so search engines can understand what your business offers.

Growth SEO is different because it is an active ongoing SEO service.

Rather than simply maintaining those foundations, I continue researching opportunities and working on the website each month to expand its visibility.

That could mean improving a page that is close to ranking well, creating a new page for an opportunity you are not currently targeting, improving local visibility, finding relevant citation or backlink opportunities, fixing technical issues or improving how well existing traffic converts into enquiries.

You do not need Growth SEO for your website to be SEO-friendly. It is for businesses that want ongoing work aimed at actively growing their organic visibility.

My standard custom-coded websites are built to be lightweight and fast.

I avoid unnecessary page-builder code and large plugin stacks, optimise images and scripts, use responsive development techniques and pay close attention to how the website loads across different devices.

Custom-coded brochure websites also have a relatively small attack surface because they do not depend on WordPress-style databases, public admin dashboards or large numbers of third-party plugins. I also use HTTPS, secure hosting and sensible technical practices.

No website can truthfully be described as impossible to compromise, but the aim is to minimise unnecessary security risks and dependencies.

Eligible custom-coded websites are also covered by my PageSpeed Performance Guarantee.

Under the testing conditions set out in the service agreement, pages within the original agreed scope must achieve 90+ in Google's Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO PageSpeed categories on the final approved build.

Third-party systems and scripts outside the original performance-tested build can affect those scores, so the exact testing conditions and exclusions are set out in the applicable service agreement.

Yes. For relevant local businesses, I can help set up or optimise your Google Business Profile so the information is accurate and the profile is properly connected to the rest of your online presence.

For website analytics, I normally use Plausible Analytics because it is lightweight and gives you clear information about website traffic without adding unnecessary complexity.

I can also set up Google Search Console so we can monitor how the website is appearing in Google Search.

Growth SEO clients receive more detailed ongoing monitoring of search, traffic and conversion performance.

There is no fixed timeframe because SEO depends on the search terms you are targeting, your location, competition, the age and authority of the website and what competitors are doing.

Some pages can begin gaining impressions and rankings relatively quickly, while more competitive searches can take many months of sustained work.

SEO should generally be treated as a long-term channel rather than something that produces guaranteed results within a few weeks.

My standard websites are built with strong SEO foundations from launch. Growth SEO is available for businesses that want ongoing work to improve and expand that visibility over time.

No specific rankings, traffic levels or enquiry numbers can be guaranteed.