How Much Does a Website Cost in Aberdeen?

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Nobody should have to fill in an enquiry form just to find out whether they can afford you. So here are the numbers first and the explanation after.

A custom small business website in Aberdeen usually costs between £1,000 and £8,000. A template you set up yourself sits closer to £300. An agency build with a team on it starts around £12,000 and climbs from there.

The gap between those figures is not really about who is expensive and who is cheap. It is about how much of the work you are doing yourself.

I design and write websites from Aberdeen, and before that I spent five years as a design engineer. So I have sat on both sides of this conversation: the business trying to work out whether a quote is fair, and the person writing the quote. Here is what actually sits behind the number.

Why two Aberdeen web design quotes can differ by thousands

Website is not one thing.

One quote might be a five page template, set up with your logo and the copy you supply. Another might include the strategy, the page structure, the copywriting, e-commerce, the SEO groundwork, photography direction and a month of support after launch. Both are websites. They are not the same job.

Neither quote is dishonest. The problem is that most of them do not spell out which one you are looking at, so you end up comparing a number against a number instead of a scope against a scope.

What you get at each price

Around £300: a template you set up yourself

You buy a Squarespace or Showit template, drop in your own words and images, and go live. It is the fastest and cheapest route, and for a brand new business testing an idea it is often the right one.

What you are trading is time and distinctiveness. You write the copy, source the photos, and work out what goes where. And the template you picked is sitting on a few hundred other sites, sometimes including one down the road from you.

Around £1,000 to £8,000: a custom site from a solo designer

This is a site built around your business rather than around a layout. Custom design, a page structure built for the way your customers actually buy, on page SEO done properly from the start, and copywriting either included or offered alongside. You deal directly with the person doing the work, which usually means fewer meetings and faster decisions.

A typical timeline is four to twelve weeks, assuming your content arrives when it is meant to. Content is almost always the thing that holds a project up, not the design.

£12,000 and above: an agency

More people, a project manager, and capacity for bespoke development. Worth it when you have a large product catalogue, complex integrations, several stakeholders who all need to sign things off, or an internal marketing team that needs a partner rather than a supplier.

What actually moves the price

Page count is the obvious one, but it is rarely the biggest.

Copywriting is. A five page site where you supply the words and a five page site where someone interviews you, researches your customers and writes the lot are different projects with a four figure gap between them. If a quote looks surprisingly low, this is usually why.

After that it comes down to whether you are selling online, whether the site needs to talk to your CRM or booking system, whether you already have a logo and brand assets or need those built, and how technical your service is.

That last one matters more in Aberdeen than in most places. If your website has to explain a service involving certification, compliance or a technical specification, someone has to understand it before they can write about it. That takes longer, and it is the part that gets underpriced most often. It is also the difference between a site that brings in enquiries from people who can actually buy and one that brings in enquiries you have to politely decline.

The costs that are not on the quote

The build is a one off. Running the site is not.

You will have a domain renewal every year, a platform subscription if you are on Showit, Squarespace or hosted WordPress, and probably an email marketing tool if you are collecting addresses. Then there is the cost of changing things: new services, new prices, new team members, new case studies.

Some designers include a support window after launch, some charge hourly, and some offer a monthly retainer. Ask which before you sign, not six months later when you need a price list updated.

How to compare two very different quotes

Six questions will tell you more than the price will.

• Who writes the copy, you or them?
• How many pages are included, and what happens when you need an extra one?
• Is SEO structure part of the build or an add on?
• What happens in the first month after launch?
• Who owns the site, the domain and the accounts if you part ways?
• How many rounds of revisions are included?

If a quote cannot answer those, it is not really a quote. It is a number.

What I charge

A custom website with me starts at £2,200.

That covers five pages, usually home, about, services, blog and contact, designed and written. The copy is included rather than quoted separately, which is the single biggest reason quotes elsewhere come in lower. Policy pages sit outside the page count because they carry no design work, so you are not paying page rates for a privacy policy.

Basic SEO set-up is part of the build, not an upsell:

• Keyword research on all the content before a word of it is written
• Page titles and meta descriptions
• Correct H tag structure
• Correct layering set-up
• Alt text on the main images, though not on every image inside a large gallery

The first one on that list is the one that matters most and the one most often skipped. Fitting keywords into copy that has already been written is a much weaker job than writing the copy around the research in the first place.

On revisions, I don’t set a number. Counting rounds just teaches people to hoard their feedback until they have “enough” to spend a round on, which slows everything down. That doesn’t mean it runs forever, because a site that never launches is no use to either of us. The aim is to get it right and get it live.

Then there is what happens afterwards, which is where a lot of web design quotes get quietly expensive. There are no recurring fees to me. I will get you set up with your platform and hosting, but you pay that company directly, so nothing routes through me with a margin sitting on top of it. Future updates are quoted on scope, whatever that scope turns out to be.

You own your website and everything that goes with it. You can come back to me for changes, handle them in-house, or take it to someone else entirely. Nothing is locked to me, and nothing stops working if you stop working with me.

Frequently asked questions

Want a real number for your project?

Tell me what your business does and what you need the site to achieve, and I will come back with a figure and a timeline for your project rather than a range. If it turns out I am not the right fit, I will say so and point you towards someone who is.

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