Hiring a small web design company is often cheaper than going to a large agency because they have less overheads. They are also usually more responsive as the client will always have direct contact with the freelance at all times. A small Web Design company will usually specialise in a few different skillsets and can help you build whatever you are looking for from small brochure sites to full eCommerce builds.

All web design companies will charge for projects slightly differently. I charge on a per project basis, so I would ask you to send me a brief outlining your requirements. That way I can see if we’ll be a good fit and if I believe I have the skills needed to bring your project to life.  I do offer starter websites packages which are designed to get you online as quickly as possible with a professional looking website that is easy to find and use.  These packages use a template that I have pre-designed and can be adapted to suit any business.  If you are looking for a unique website to showcase your business click here to find out about our bespoke website design service.

So I usually break the project into two payments. The first 50% is paid upfront as an initial kick off invoice. The remaining 50% is paid when no more changes are required on the development server and the site is ready to go live.

Every Web Design Altrincham Project will be broken down into various parts with a typical bespoke brochure site taking around 6 – 8 weeks from start to finish. A more complicated build or something e-Commere based could be anywhere from 8 – 20 weeks depending on the size and how complex it is. For a breakdown of an average timeline for my freelance web design projects please see the below table:

For the best possible start to your project it’s always best that you have everything you need to hit the ground running. If you don’t have these ready it can just make things take slightly longer.

• Branding – I’ll ask you to supply any brand guidelines you have before we begin. If you dont have any that’s not a problem, simply supplying your logo in an SVG format will suffice.
• Photography – If you have an image library I’ll ask to access to this, again if you don’t have this we can look at sourcing images for you from stock libraries like Shutterstock or Unsplash.
• Content – If you have already planned out your content with sitemaps and corresponding documents outlining all the content that goes on each page, fantastic! If not, I will ask for a rough content plan so we know what needs to go on each page and then we can fill the pages with placeholder ‘lorem ipsum’ until you have written the content.

It depends on how your current website is built and what access you have to the code / admin section of it.  However, this can be easily worked out, so why not get in touch and I’ll see what I can do for you.

Yes. As a freelance web designer I’m an advocate for content management systems (CMS). Using a CMS like WordPress means that you will be able to easily edit your website yourself with ease, without the need for any programming knowledge, by adding/editing pages and blog posts, etc. A training session will also be offered to make sure that you are comfortable updating your website.

Yes. I always make sure that my websites are search engine friendly and follow all the latest best practices. I also pay close attention to Google’s Core Web Vitals to make sure the website is as fast as possible, this includes modern coding practices like using WebP/SVG imagery and if using a CMS caching plugins will be utilised to again improve the performance.

Yes.  I am able to offer a number of web hosting packages depending on the requirements of your website.

As a freelance web designer I often use WordPress to power the majority of my websites. Clients often like to use this as it’s open source (meaning it doesn’t require an expensive yearly licence to use) and it’s very easy to use.

I often compare this to the Windows vs Mac argument from several years ago where Apple were proudly boasting that “Mac’s don’t get viruses” the reality of this is fairly obvious when you think about it. Windows had a massive market share compared to Apple at the time so the hackers were focusing their efforts on this because they could target a larger audience. Things have changed since then and at the last open tally the latest version of OS has more open vunertabilities than the latest version of windows. So what does this have to do with WordPress? Well WordPress powers approximately 40% of the web and has the largest market share by a huge amount. WordPress itself isn’t inhereintly unsecure, but when you pair things such as weak passwords, bad web hosting and not keeping the plugins/core files up to date then it’s a recipe to get hacked. The truth is that any website that has a database/public facing login is at risk of being hacked if proper security precautions aren’t followed. All websites that are hosted with me are regularly updated with the latest security updates as standard.

I enjoy working with a wide range of companies and individuals, and I bring the same skills to my work for small clients that I do for larger ones. I’m just as interested in working with small businesses as I am are big ones, and because I’m a local business, I have an edge when it comes to meeting the demands of developing organisations.