A web developer hands you a quote. It lists 14 pages, a "custom blog architecture", a "lead nurturing system", an "interactive about page", and a "thought leadership content hub". The total is £9,800. You have a four-person accountancy practice in Wandsworth.
You don't need any of that. You need five pages that load fast, explain what you do, and let people contact you. The rest is padding designed to make the invoice feel substantial.
This is what a small business website actually needs, what's optional, and what's pure agency-speak for "we needed to justify the price."
The five pages that genuinely matter
Almost every small business website in the UK can be reduced to five pages. If you're a restaurant, a clinic, a consultancy, a tradesperson, a salon, or a small B2B service business, this is your scope.
1. Homepage. The single most important page. Within five seconds of landing, a visitor needs to know what you do, who you do it for, and how to take the next step. That's it. Above the fold: clear headline ("Bookkeeping for London creative agencies"), a short subhead, one primary call to action ("Book a free 30-minute call"). Below the fold: brief services overview, social proof (logos, testimonials, or a review count), and a secondary CTA. No carousel. No video background. No animated illustrations that take three seconds to load.
2. Services / What we do. One page, or one page per service if you offer 2–4 distinct things. Each service gets: what it is in plain English, who it's for, what it costs (or a price range), what's included, and a CTA. The biggest mistake here is hedging on price. "Pricing on request" tells the visitor you're going to negotiate based on how rich they look. Show a starting price.
3. About. People hire people. A 250-word page about who you are, why you started this business, and what you actually believe about your work. One photo of you (or your team). No stock photography of generic professionals shaking hands. The about page is where the human shows up — let it.
4. Contact. Phone number, email address, physical address if you have one, business hours, and a simple form (name, email, message — that's it, four fields max). If you take bookings, embed a Cal.com or similar widget. If you don't, just the form. A Google Map is helpful for storefront businesses, optional for everyone else.
5. One specific landing page per primary service. If you have a single hero service that drives most of your revenue, build a dedicated page for it. Restaurant: "Private dining". Dentist: "Invisalign". Plumber: "Boiler installation". This is the page you'd run ads to. It's longer than your services page, has more proof, and converts harder.
That's it. Five pages. A competent developer can build this well in 2–3 weeks.
What's optional, depending on your business
Not padding — but not always necessary. Add these only if there's a clear business reason.
Blog. Worth it if you have a content strategy and someone who will actually write posts monthly. Pointless if you'll publish three articles in the first month and then stop forever (which is what happens 80% of the time). An empty or stale blog hurts you more than no blog at all — it tells visitors your business is half-abandoned.
Portfolio / Case studies / Gallery. Essential for visual businesses (photographers, designers, interior architects, restaurants, salons). Useful for service businesses with named clients. Pointless for businesses with confidential client work or generic services. If you include it, populate it. Three case studies beats fifteen empty placeholders.
Testimonials page. Most small businesses don't need a dedicated testimonials page — testimonials work better embedded across the site (homepage, services, landing page). Build a standalone page only if you have 20+ great testimonials and they're a primary conversion driver in your industry (legal, financial advice, anything trust-heavy).
FAQ. Worth it if you genuinely get the same five questions over and over. Otherwise, integrate FAQs into the relevant service pages. A standalone FAQ with 30 generic questions is filler.
Booking / Scheduling. Use a third-party tool (Cal.com, SimplyBook, Calendly, Square, etc.) embedded into your contact or landing page. Do not pay £2,000 for a "custom booking system". The off-the-shelf options are better, cheaper, and have 24/7 support that your developer doesn't.
E-commerce / Shop. Different conversation entirely. If you're selling physical products, you need Shopify (or similar) — not a custom build. If you're selling digital products or services with payment up front, a Stripe checkout link is enough. If a developer quotes you £6,000 to "build a shop", ask them why you're not just using Shopify at £25/month.
For more on what these scopes actually cost in London, I broke down the price ranges in detail here.
The padding — what to refuse
This is where invoices balloon. None of this adds business value for a typical small business. All of it sounds impressive in a quote.
"Custom blog architecture" or "content hub". A blog is a list of posts and a post template. That's two pages of work. Anything labelled "architecture" or "hub" in this context is the developer making it sound bigger than it is. £200 of work, often quoted at £1,500.
"Interactive about page" or "scrollytelling". Animations that trigger as you scroll, parallax effects, "engaging brand storytelling experiences". Bounce rate goes up, page speed goes down, conversion stays flat or drops. Spend the £1,200 elsewhere.
"Lead nurturing system" or "marketing automation integration". Translation: they'll connect your contact form to Mailchimp. That's a 30-minute job. If they're quoting £800 for it, walk.
"Thought leadership content hub". A blog with extra words on the invoice.
"Custom CMS". Almost always a bad idea for a small business. Use WordPress, Sanity, Contentful, Strapi, or whatever the developer's preference is — but make sure it's a known tool. "Custom CMS" usually means "tool only we know how to maintain", which is a lock-in.
"Bespoke design system". For a five-page small business website, this means "we used Figma like everyone else does". Don't pay extra for the label.
"Conversion-rate-optimised funnel architecture". A landing page with a CTA. £150 of language, £1,500 on the invoice.
"SEO strategy" as a separate £2,000 line item at build time. Some on-page SEO setup (titles, meta descriptions, schema markup, fast load times, clean URLs) should be included in a competent build for free. Anything beyond that — keyword research, content strategy, link building — is a separate ongoing service that doesn't belong in a website build quote. If you want SEO, hire an SEO specialist in month two, not bundle it into the build.
"Multi-language support" you don't need. Adding French / Spanish / Mandarin to a London cleaning business's site because it sounds inclusive: £2,000 of work, used by nobody. Add languages only if you have actual demonstrated demand.
"Custom illustrations" or "bespoke iconography". Beautiful for an agency portfolio piece. Irrelevant to whether someone books your dental cleaning. Use icons from Lucide or Heroicons (free) and stock photography that's been curated, not custom-illustrated.
The technical baseline (non-negotiable, should be included)
Some things aren't optional. Any quote that doesn't include these is incomplete:
- —Mobile responsive. Roughly 70% of small business website traffic is mobile. This isn't a feature; it's the baseline. Should never be a separate line item.
- —Fast page load. Under 2 seconds on a 4G connection. Google measures this and ranks accordingly. Should be standard, not a "performance package".
- —Basic on-page SEO. Title tags, meta descriptions, semantic HTML, clean URLs, sitemap, robots.txt, schema markup for local businesses. Standard, not extra.
- —HTTPS. Free via Let's Encrypt. If anyone charges for "SSL certificate", they're inflating.
- —Accessibility basics. Alt text on images, sufficient colour contrast, keyboard navigation, semantic structure. Legal requirement in some industries; good practice in all.
- —Analytics. Google Analytics or a privacy-friendly alternative like Plausible. 30-minute setup. Should be included.
- —Contact form spam protection. Honeypot or basic rate limiting. Should not need to be specified.
If a developer doesn't include these by default, they're either inexperienced or padding the second invoice.
The honest five-page small business website quote
Here's what a fair quote for this scope actually looks like in London in 2026:
| Item | Fair price (London freelancer) |
|---|---|
| Five-page site, design + build | £1,800–£3,500 |
| Domain registration | £15/year |
| Hosting (Vercel/Netlify free tier or £20/month) | £0–£240/year |
| CMS subscription (if using Sanity/Contentful) | £0–£200/year |
| Stock photography / icons | £0–£100 one-off |
| Year one all-in | £1,815–£4,040 |
Anything dramatically over this — for this scope — has padding in it. Either ask the developer to itemise what's driving the difference, or get another quote.
The scoping conversation
When a developer asks "what pages do you want?", they're testing whether you've thought about it. The good answer is some version of:
"Homepage, services page (or three service pages), about, contact, and one landing page for our main service. No blog yet — maybe in year two. We use Cal.com for bookings, so embed that on the contact page. We don't need e-commerce."
That's a clear scope. A good developer will quote against it confidently. A padded one will start adding things you didn't ask for.
For more on how to evaluate the developer themselves, the twelve questions I'd ask before hiring anyone goes through the whole conversation.
The point
A small business website is a tool, not an art project. Five well-built pages will outperform fifteen mediocre ones every time. The job of the site is to convert visitors into enquiries — not to win design awards or impress your developer's portfolio reviewers.
If your quote includes anything from the padding list and the developer can't explain in plain English what business outcome it produces, ask them to remove it. Real answer or removal. There's no third option.
I build websites for London small businesses at the five-page scope above, in the £1,800–£3,500 range, with all the technical baseline included by default. If you have a quote you're unsure about, send it to me and I'll tell you in writing within 48 hours which line items are real work and which are padding. No charge, no pitch — even if you decide to go with the developer who quoted you.
Got a quote you want a second opinion on? Email it to alvaro.teran97@gmail.com with "quote review" in the subject. I'll reply within 48 hours with a line-by-line read on what's fair and what isn't.