London
based Web Design, Branding and Web
Development Agency.

Web design describes the look and feel of almost everything you see on the internet, from the front end. This is the collaborative work that brings together user interface (UI) graphic design, and copywriting. When you type in a URL or click on a link to a webpage, everything on that page has been carefully thought out to include design elements that are visually appealing. This encourages a person to explore that website for as long as possible. A good web design creates a positive brand experience that subtly guides you through its pages to complete a goal, without you even realising it. It should perfectly combine a well-thought-out layout, strong aesthetic and interesting content. We’ve been designing great websites for over two decades, so get in touch to say hello and let’s chat about designing a great website for your business.

Quoting for a good web design should always start with a conversation between client and agency. Even a simple web design cost would need to be submitted on the basis of the design appealing to your target audience and standing out amongst your competitors.

We’ve worked with all types of businesses so we understand the most important and appealing elements of UX. The cost to design a website depends on these foundations. This can take a few weeks for a simple brochure website at around £5,000, or a few months for a more complicated e-commerce site with lots of products and moving parts, for around £10,000. So, how much a website costs depends entirely on what type of design and functionality you want to include.

Our web design costs vary per project, but this is a guideline on what you can expect. 

With so many web design agencies out there and a lot of terrible websites, it can be difficult to know which one to choose and who to trust with the design of your website. For a lot of people, this comes down to just accepting the cheapest quote.

While you may find that the best agency for you is the cheapest, you need to be sure that they understand exactly what you need and have the technical ability to produce a website that is unique to your business and has the functionality you need to convert visitors to customers.

Always chat to your agency on the phone before accepting a quote. Listen carefully for the type of words they use. If they don’t mention user experience (UX) or conversions. Or vaguely reference optimisation and click-through-rates without going into too much detail, then stay away. A good web design agency should be able to talk about design aesthetics with good conversion elements by listening and understanding who you are, how you’d like to position your business and what your customers will respond to.

A website can’t exist without design and development working seamlessly together. Lilo has been developing websites for the past 20 years (yes, that’s about as long as websites have existed!) Initially, we built our own Content Management Systems (CMS) as the few “off the shelf” products that were available then didn’t suit the needs of our clients. While this was a great solution, it took time and was costly. But with the introduction of sleek CMS systems like WordPress and Magento, we’ve been able to offer web development options using these that reduce time and cost.

We still develop bespoke systems when needed (from CMS to CRMs), but we tend to use WordPress for the development of our brochure sites. It’s quick to implement, secure and robust, and allows us to spend more time working on what makes the difference to you and your brand: UX and design.  We create custom-made designs, unique to your brand and its objectives, and then implement them on the selected platform. It’s very seldom that you would require the cost for web development and not the design and vice versa.

Web development is rarely a cost on it’s own as it most often is used to build a site we have designed. 

• Standard WordPress Site Development
  • Design Implementation: 1 day
  • Development: 5 days
  • Testing: 1 day @ £300
  • Project Management: 1 day 
  • @ £450= £3,450

• Standard Bespoke Site Development
  • Design Implementation: 5 days
  • Development: 15 days
  • Testing: 3 days @ £300
  • Project Management: 3 days
  • @ £450= £11,250

The best way to grow your business is with a strong SEO strategy. At Lilo, we’ll tell you from the start that web design doesn’t exist to Google if it doesn’t come with clever SEO tactics and support. Every marketing exercise needs to have a goal, and this is no different for SEO. We’ve been in the SEO game for years and know that a good website design needs to have strong SEO objectives, this is what the cost will be based on. SEO is a long-term investment and as long as people are searching for you or your type of business online, then a good SEO strategy will yield results for years to come.

Some companies might offer you cheap tricks that promise you quick ranking results. These are known as “black hat SEO” tactics – like keyword stuffing and spammy backlinks. These will do more harm than good. Google will have you banished before you can even utter the word “ranking”. What you want is good quality traffic that impresses Google and this entails a slow, steady build and a good eye for analytics. Lilo offers professional SEO at a retainer cost for a fixed period of time. We recommend no less than two full days dedicated to SEO if you’re really serious about ranking well (and you should be!)

In order to help you build up your ranking properly by making changes and adjustments to maximise results. We recommend at least two days per month to manage and optimise your website’s SEO. We charge £450 for the two days. If you’d like to spend more time on your SEO we’ll happily chat about what suits you and your budget.

The cost of an e-commerce website design and development depends entirely on the project. Whether you’re selling a single bar of magical chocolate or a thousand types of gardening tools, an e-commerce website requires a strong knowledge of website development and technical skill. You can’t overlook the fact that the majority of people shop online through their mobile devices, so it’s a given that any size website, whether you’re selling one or one thousand products, also needs to be mobile friendly without losing any of the UX functionality or image quality.

We’ll create a custom-made web design that aligns with your brand objectives then make recommendations on implementing on a suitable, sustainable Content Management System (CMS) platform like Shopify, Woocommerce and Magento. Lilo has years of experience and collective skills in building e-commerce websites. We appreciate every requirement for a happy customer experience that converts. Let’s have a chat to get an understanding of your functional requirements and business objectives and we’ll recommend the best solution for the development of an ecommerce site. We’ll then offer a no obligation quote for your ecommerce website.

The cost of an e-Commerce site varies greatly depending on the technical aspects and the size of the product range. Prices start from around £5000

• Standard Woocommerce and Shopify Sites Development
  • Design Implementation: 2 days
  • Development: 7 days
  • Testing: 1 day @ £300
  • Project Management: 1 day 
  • @ £450= £4,800

• Standard Magento Site Development
  • Design Implementation: 5 days
  • Development: 15 days
  • Testing: 3 days @ £300
  • Project Management: 3 days
  • @ £450= £11,250

Social media marketing begins with a strategy. Every piece of content should be produced with a particular goal in mind that serves the overall strategy. A detailed, well researched social media strategy can take about a week to put together, and is usually charged with a daily rate. The social media team at Lilo will have a chat with you and will ask a lot of questions about your business, your target audience and what you hope to get from your social media channels. Once you have a paid organic strategy in place, you will then need to create content that aligns to it and post these to your channels, and then measure, analyse and optimise. The cost for an agency to manage this for you will come down to how many hours per month you would need or like, and pay the agency a social media marketing retainer.

Usability in the context of web design is recognising human behaviour and guiding a user towards the completion of a goal. It’s not usually something that a design get’s right the first time, as its success is based on testing and adapting to constantly improve the user’s experience. Our designers focus on the likely user and create a positive user experience beginning with wireframes and continuing right through to the final website. Throughout the design and development process we’ll be looking out for things like accessibility of the site, avoiding broken links, quick loading times and mobile responsiveness. We’ll also design with easy-to-use simplicity, and consistency using familiar design elements and clear information architecture. Good usability requires thorough research and testing to ensure it’s effortlessly relevant to your target audience.

Back when the internet was a new concept and we were all using dumb phones, websites were designed for a single-size desktop screen. Now with numerous desktop, mobile, and tablet screen sizes, web design has had to adapt to ensure that a user on any device is still presented with a positive user experience.  Responsive web design means changing navigation, layout and content for a good user experience. The difference between “responsive” and “mobile friendly”, is that responsive design would not necessarily have the same elements as the desktop version, but mobile-friendly keeps everything the same but the scale is just smaller. Responsive web design is not a different type of technology, it just means that the website responds to the device it’s being viewed on.

Knowing when a website needs an update depends on the reason for the update. You might want to change some design elements or refresh your entire online presence. These changes would only happen now and then. But in order to meet the approval of Google’s algorithms and rank well, you need to make some updates more regularly. These would be updating content with new images or products and updating news and blog items with relevant keywords and linking. This should be done as often as possible, but at least once a month.  The best approach is to make small website improvements daily, as this can really help your growth and SEO.

Website development is the term used for the work that goes into building the actual website, once the design elements have been finalised. Web development often refers to web markup and coding, but there are lots of other elements involved, like CMS development and server and network configurations, among others. These contribute to a quick loading, slick website. Lilo web developers are skilled at all levels. We’ve been developing single, static pages of plain text and also building complex web applications for years, so we’re able to quickly advise on what type of web development you’d need to support the design, and make your online presence come to life.

Front end development creates the content on a website that you interact with and ensures that it looks good and is easy to use. This is what guides a user to complete certain goals through simple navigation and an immersive experience. These could be fonts, drop-down menus, sliders, and everything else that makes a design stand out among so many other websites. All these design elements are being controlled by your browser and have been carefully built by a skilled web developer using a combination of three web development languages, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Lilo’s front end developers work closely with our designers to understand user needs and find opportunities to create smart solutions that contribute to good user experience (UX) and high conversion rates.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. A search engine allows internet users to search for something online. Mostly, this is done by using keywords. Google is the most common search engine, but there are others like Microsoft Edge and Bing. When a user types in a keyword, the search engine returns a results page. This ranks pages based on their relevance to the keywords used for the search. These rankings are determined by algorithms, which differ per search engine. Optimisation is the practice of ensuring that your website is seen by these search engines as relevant enough to be shown high up on a search engine results page (SERP). If you attract visitors with high intent that perform certain actions on your website, the better you will rank. But this doesn’t happen naturally, which is why you need a clear SEO strategy for your website.

SEO is important for driving good quality traffic to your website, in high quantities. You can drive anyone to your website, but if they don’t take any action then there’s no point in them being there. What you want are visitors that show intent. These are users that are looking for a product or service that you’re selling. But the next step is for you to be right in front of them when they do a search for it online. That’s where smart SEO strategy and tactics can be key to a successful website that inspires strong business growth. Good SEO improves customer service, drives the right people to your site which helps to increase conversions, and builds trust and authority for your brand.