When I was born, my dad was a shepherd. He did not earn much. When I was young, a year’s wages for him was just what we needed to get by and not much else. So it bothered me recently when I realised I was charging people more for a website than dad saw for months of hard, back-breaking labour.
That is not how I want to do business.
I am not struggling. I have enough to cover rent. I eat well. I can stop being anxious about money for the first time in my life. And somewhere in the middle of becoming comfortable, I stopped thinking about what my prices actually meant to people.
So I changed them.
My starter websites are now around £650 instead of £1,800. Same process. Same site. Same quality. Nothing different except the price.
The Morrisons version
I was thinking about this the other way round a few days ago. Morrisons is not Waitrose. It does not have the same margins or the same feel. But it feeds people well and it does not ask them to stretch further than they can afford.
That is what I want to be in web design.
Not cheap. Not cutting corners or rushing through things. Just affordable. Good work. The kind of thing a small business can budget for without wondering if it is a mistake.
How this actually works
The reason I can do this is web typography. I have enough clients on monthly retainers – the ones I help with their web typography – that the money is steady. That means I do not have to squeeze every pound out of a new build to cover the rest of the year.
It is a privilege. I know that. A lot of web designers do not have that luxury. I do, and so I am using it to make things fairer.
What it means for you
If you have been thinking about a website but the price stopped you, this changes things. You can get a good website, built to last, for under a grand. Same standards. Same me answering your emails.
Small businesses are why I do this work. Making it actually affordable to work with someone who knows what they are doing feels like the only fair thing.
If you want to talk about it, get in touch. No sales talk. No pressure. Just honest numbers. I know what it’s like to have a viable idea and no money to build it, and I don’t want £££ to be a road block for you.
