Services
Web design in London
- 31,935businesses listed
- 60%no website
- 24%publish hours
- Price
- from £900
- Terms
- one off, no contract
- Turnaround
- 2 to 3 weeks
What the numbers say
London is around half online, which is the hardest market to judge
60% of the 31,935 businesses we hold in London have no website, so roughly half do. That is the awkward middle: enough competitors online that being absent is noticed, not so many that merely existing stands out.
What decides it here is rarely how the site looks. It is whether the site answers the question somebody arrived with — hours, location, what you actually do, and a number that can be tapped. A great many of the London sites already up miss at least one.
This is also the band where the Google Business Profile does the most work per pound, because it appears in the map results above the ordinary links and costs nothing to get right.
By trade
Which trades in London are actually offline
The headline figure hides a wide spread. In London, hairdressers & beauty are the least likely to have a website: 76% of the 5079 we list have none. Pubs & bars are the most likely to have one, at 43% without. That is a 33-point gap between two trades in the same city.
A gap that size usually means the two trades get their custom differently. Where most competitors have no site, a plain one is enough to be the only result somebody can check. Where most already do, the site is assumed and the decision gets made on something else.
London sits close to the middle of the cities we cover, 60% against a median of 62%, so nothing about the market here is unusual in either direction.
- Restaurants7826 listed51%no website
- Cafes5351 listed68%no website
- Takeaways5298 listed65%no website
- Hairdressers & beauty5079 listed76%no website
- Pubs & bars3882 listed43%no website
- Pharmacies1054 listed57%no website
By area
Where in London the gap is widest
London is not one market. Across the 8 areas where we hold enough listings to compare, Walthamstow has the most businesses with no website at 82% of 363, and West End the fewest at 32% of 660. Where you trade inside the city changes who you are actually competing with.
| Area | Listed | No website | Publish hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walthamstow | 363 | 82% | 10% |
| Fairfield | 251 | 77% | 14% |
| Spitalfields & Banglatown | 267 | 67% | 39% |
| Bloomsbury | 303 | 56% | 39% |
| Hoxton East & Shoreditch | 210 | 56% | 31% |
| St James's | 620 | 51% | 31% |
| Holborn & Covent Garden | 242 | 48% | 37% |
| West End | 660 | 32% | 36% |
Areas are ONS ward names, which is how the underlying data records them rather than how anybody says them out loud. Only wards with at least 40 listings are shown, because below that a single business moves the percentage several points.
What we hold for London
31,935 businesses, of which 7,633 (24%) publish opening hours and 9,628 have a phone number recorded. The trades break down like this:
- Restaurants7826
- Cafes5351
- Takeaways5298
- Hairdressers & beauty5079
- Pubs & bars3882
- Pharmacies1054
from £900, one off, no contract
What you get
A site that loads fast, reads properly on a phone, and tells Google what you do and where you are. Handed over on your own domain, in your name.
What is included
- Up to five pages, written with you rather than filled with placeholder text
- Built mobile-first, because that is where local searching happens
- Services, hours, address and phone marked up so Google can read them
- A contact form that reaches your inbox, tested by sending one before launch
- Your own domain and hosting, registered in your name and not ours
- Handover notes another developer could pick the site up from
What is not included
- No ongoing fee unless you ask for one. The site is yours at handover.
- No page-builder lock-in that stops you moving it later.
- No ranking promise. A new site does not outrank an established one for being new.
We reply by email and read every enquiry ourselves. Nothing is charged from this page.
By area
London by area
London varies enormously by area, from 30% offline to 82%. Each has its own page.
Before you buy anything: if your Google Business Profile has never been set up properly, that is almost always the bigger change for the smaller invoice. We fix those for £149, one off. What that covers.
If the job is bigger than this
The prices above are where each service starts, and they cover what most small businesses need. Larger jobs get quoted properly rather than squeezed into a package: multiple locations, booking or payments, a shop, a rebuild that has to keep its existing rankings, ongoing work across more than one service, or anything where the answer depends on what you already have.
Tell us what you are trying to do and we will come back with a scope and a fixed price, or say plainly if we are not the right people for it.
Questions
Questions
How many businesses in London have a website?
Of the 31,935 we list in London, 12,869 have a website recorded and 19,066 do not, so 60% have none. Counted from this directory, sourced from OpenStreetMap, so treat it as a floor.
What does web design cost in London?
from £900, one off, no contract. A site that loads fast, reads properly on a phone, and tells Google what you do and where you are. Handed over on your own domain, in your name.
How much does a small business website cost?
Ours start at £900 for up to five pages, and most land between £900 and £2,000 depending on page count and how much writing you want done for you. Quotes of £5,000 and up usually include design work, ongoing retainers or bespoke functionality rather than a bigger version of the same site. Below £500, ask who owns the domain and hosting afterwards.
How long does it take?
Two to three weeks from the point we have your content, and the content sets the pace rather than the build. Gathering roughly 1,200 words and some photographs takes most people longer than building the pages takes us.
Will a new website put me at the top of Google?
No, and nobody can promise it. A new site does not outrank an established one for being new. What it does is make you findable when somebody searches your name, give Google something to show, and give a customer somewhere to check your hours. For most local businesses the faster win is the Google Business Profile, which is why we sell that separately and cheaply.
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