Web design · London
Web design in London, without the agency layer.
London agencies are very good and very expensive, and a lot of what you pay for is the people between you and the person doing the work. This is the version without that.
Werehouse Media is a one-person, SEO-led web design studio working with London businesses remotely, with meetings in person when a project justifies it. The same person does the design, the copy, the build and the search work, so there is no account manager layer and no brief getting lost between departments. Single-page sites start at £495. Most multi-page builds land between £1,795 upwards, with the timeline agreed at quote stage, against £15,000 and up for comparable work at a central London agency. Standalone search work is sold as one-off projects: an audit and fix list from £495. Clients own the domain, the code and every account outright, with no lock-in on any retainer. The trade-off is honest: one person means limited concurrent capacity and no support rota, so a business that needs a guaranteed response time is better served by an agency.
The market here
London is not one market, and treating it as one is why most sites fail here.
The single most common mistake on a London small-business website is aiming at the word London. A plumber in Balham and a plumber in Barnet are not competing with each other, but a page targeting "plumber London" puts both of them against every firm in a city of nine million. It is a term dominated by national lead-generation sites that buy your enquiry and sell it on to five competitors.
The version that works is borough and neighbourhood level. A real page for Clapham, a real page for Wandsworth, a real page for the three postcodes you actually cover, each one written for that area rather than duplicated with the name swapped. That is a slower build and it beats the generic city page comfortably, because it matches how people search when they genuinely need someone nearby.
The second London-specific factor is budget expectation. Central agencies quote £15,000 to £40,000 for work that a competent single operator delivers for a fraction of that, and a good deal of the difference is overhead, new business costs and the account management layer. That layer buys you real things: capacity, cover, a rota, a creative director. If you need those, buy them. If what you actually need is one site built properly by one person who answers the phone, you are paying for a structure you will never use.
Who I build for in London
Four kinds of business, four different jobs.
01
Professional and regulated firms
Solicitors, accountants, brokers, advisers, consultancies.
Credibility without the identikit corporate template, compliance handled in the copy rather than the design, and a page per service so each one can rank on its own terms.
02
E-commerce and D2C brands
Shopify and custom builds, London-based and shipping nationally.
Product page structure, speed and search visibility, and a firm word about the urgency apps that quietly cost premium brands order value.
03
Local service businesses
Trades, home services, clinics and studios across the boroughs.
Borough-level pages instead of one page shouting London, plus the Google Business Profile work that decides who appears in the map pack.
04
Startups and small teams
Pre-seed to Series A, needing a real site rather than a landing page.
Something that survives contact with investors and customers, built to be edited without a developer, and fast enough to not embarrass you in a pitch.
The search reality
What ranking in London actually takes
| Factor | How it works in London | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Targeting | City-wide terms are dominated by national lead-generation sites and large agencies with years of authority behind them. | Borough, neighbourhood and postcode pages, each genuinely written for that area. Slower, and it is the approach that actually returns. |
| Google Business Profile | For anything with a service area, the map pack is most of the result on a phone and it is fiercely contested. | Correct category, service area drawn to the boroughs you cover, photographs, and consistent name, address and phone across every directory you appear in. |
| Content depth | London competitors are usually well resourced and publish regularly. | Depth beats frequency. A handful of genuinely useful pages that answer a real question outrank a blog updated weekly with nothing in it. |
| Speed | Commuter traffic on patchy underground and overground connections. | A site that loads on a bad connection in a tunnel. Hand-coded, no plugin stack, images sized properly. |
What it costs
Prices do not change with your postcode.
Every project is quoted in writing before anything starts. There is no hourly meter and no surprise invoice at the end.
- Single-page site, from £495. Usually a placeholder for something bigger later, or a business that genuinely only needs one page.
- Multi-page build, £1,795 upwards. Most London projects land here. Timeline agreed at quote stage, unlimited revisions between the first and final draft.
- Complex builds with custom animation, five figures. Longer timeline, quoted properly.
- Search and AI visibility audit, on application. A one-off look at what is holding an existing site back on Google and in AI answers, with a prioritised list.
- Local SEO foundations, £995. One-off project: Google Business Profile, town and service pages, technical fixes.
- Search groundwork, included in every build. Technical SEO, structured data, fast pages and a properly configured Google Business Profile, done once and done right rather than billed monthly.
- Brand kits from £895. Automation priced on application. Website care from £49 a month.
A third books the work, a third on the first draft, the balance before launch. Every build includes thirty days of post-launch fixes and reasonable tweaks.
Read this before you enquire
When I am not the right choice
Being outside London is not a good reason to rule me out. These are.
- You need a team with cover. One person means one holiday, one bout of flu and a limited number of builds at a time. If you need a guaranteed response time, buy an agency.
- You want a stripped-down version of a bigger build. There is a proper single-page site from £495 and I will point you at it when it fits. I will not quote a thinned-out multi-page build that does half of each job.
- You want the phone ringing within a fortnight. A page can be live in days, but search work is measured in months. If next week is the deadline, spend the money on Google Ads.
- You want to sit in an office and point at a screen. The process runs on calls, email and shared drafts, with meetings in person by arrangement.
London questions
Straight answers.
No. I am in England and work with London businesses remotely, with meetings in person when the project justifies giving up the day. If having someone in the same postcode matters to you, that is a fair reason to hire locally, and I would rather say so now than pretend otherwise.
No office in zone one, no sales team, no account managers and no new business department. You get the person doing the work. The honest trade-off is capacity: an agency can run six projects at once and cover for illness and holidays. I cannot.
Probably not, and I would not take your money trying. That term is owned by national lead-generation sites with enormous authority. What does work is borough and neighbourhood pages, which convert better anyway because someone searching for their own area has already decided they want somebody nearby.
Yes, on Shopify and on custom builds. The usual work is product page structure, speed and search visibility rather than a redesign, because most premium brands have a site that looks right and is quietly losing money on the details.
Worth reading next
Written for business owners, not web designers.
Next step
Tell me what you sell in London.
You will get an honest answer, a fixed price, and no follow-up sequence pestering you for a fortnight.