Web design in Medway for small businesses
Web design in Medway, and website development across Kent and the South East, for small businesses that would rather deal with two named people than an account manager. Simple sites carry no build fee at all; anything with a database or custom backend starts from £500.
Your website is usually the first version of you people meet. It should load quickly, look right on every device, show up in Google, and quietly turn visitors into customers while you get on with running your business. We build sites that do that, from a single launch page for a new venture to full platforms with bookings, payments and customer accounts.
£0 build fee on simple sites· fixed quote before we start
Whatever kind of site you need
No two projects are the same, but most fall somewhere on this spectrum - and we cover all of it.
Business & marketing sites
A sharp, fast home for your business that makes people stop scrolling and get in touch.
Online shops
E-commerce with proper product pages, smooth checkout, and Stripe payments that just work.
Booking & customer portals
Let customers book, pay, log in, and manage things themselves - fewer phone calls, happier customers.
Web apps & dashboards
Full platforms with accounts, data, and admin tools - websites that are really software.
Simple site? Pay no build fee
If your website is straightforward - a landing page or brochure site with a contact form, no database and no complex backend - we can build it for no build fee at all. You pay nothing for the build; you host it with us for the first year at our standard rate of £45 a month, which is £540 across the year, and after those twelve months the source code is yours. Keep hosting with us, or take it anywhere.
Because "simple" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, here is the exact test. Every line has to be true for the £0 build fee to apply, and we will tell you at the first conversation, not after a survey.
Roughly ten pages or fewer
Home, services, about, contact and a handful of others. Beyond that the design system stops being the bulk of the work and content does.
No database and no logins
Nothing customers sign into, no bookings, no baskets, no records stored. A contact form that emails you is fine.
Content that is basically settled
You supply the words and photos, or we work from what you already have. Copywriting and photography from scratch are separate work.
No integrations
No CRM, accounting tool, booking system or payment processor wired in. Embedding a map or a social feed is fine.
Hosted with us for the first year
£45 a month, no minimum term after year one, and the source code becomes yours at twelve months either way.
Anything else, from £500
A database, customer accounts, e-commerce or custom API work carries a build fee starting at £500, always on a fixed quote agreed first.
Fast, found, and accessible - as standard
Speed and search visibility aren't premium add-ons; they're the baseline. Every site we ship is measured against Google's Core Web Vitals before launch, and comes out of the box with clean structure, proper metadata, and a sitemap - the technical foundations that search rankings are built on. If a page fails a threshold, it gets fixed before it goes live and is not logged as a future optimisation.
We also build for everyone: keyboard navigation, screen-reader support, and readable contrast are part of how we work, not an afterthought.
Based in Medway, working across Kent and the South East
We are two people in Medway, not a national agency with a Kent landing page. In practice that means you can meet us, you always talk to the person writing the code, and there is no account manager adding a week to every question. Most of our work happens over email and calls, and we will come to you for the conversations that are better in person.
We work with businesses across Medway, Maidstone, Canterbury, Ashford, Tunbridge Wells and the wider South East, and with clients elsewhere in the UK on the same terms. What we deliberately do not do is publish a page for every town we would like to rank in. If we have not done real work in a place, a page claiming otherwise helps nobody, and you can tell those pages apart from the real thing in about ten seconds.
See the work before you commit
Judging a web developer from a portfolio of screenshots is nearly impossible, so we publish demo sites you can open, click through and measure yourself. They are complete builds, not mockups: real pages, real navigation, real performance to test against whatever tool you like.
That is the honest version of proof. Open the demos, run them through PageSpeed Insights, tab through them with a keyboard, and see whether the claims on this page hold up before you talk to us.
Why our websites cost less than you'd expect
Northbytes pairs experienced developers with state-of-the-art AI tooling. The AI accelerates the mechanical work; the humans make the decisions, review every line, and obsess over the details you'll actually notice. The result is agency-quality work delivered faster - and competitive pricing, because we're not billing you for the slow parts.
You'll get a fixed, plain-English quote before we start. No day rates that drift, no "phase two" ambushes.
Common questions
How much does a website cost for a UK small business?
For a simple site - a landing page or brochure site with a contact form - it can be nothing at all: we build it for no build fee, you host it with us for the first year at £45 a month, and after that year the source code is yours. Sites that need a database or custom backend work, like online shops, booking systems and customer portals, carry a build fee from £500, and full web apps start from £1,500. Sitting between a £15-a-month website builder and a £10,000 agency quote is deliberate: you get a site built by developers, at a price a small business can actually justify. Every project gets a fixed quote up front, so there are no day rates and no drifting invoices.
How long does a website take to build?
A launch site is usually live in two to four weeks from the first conversation. Bigger builds with shops, bookings or customer accounts take longer, and we'll give you the honest timeline with the quote. Either way you'll see the design early and working pages before launch, not a single reveal at the end.
Will my website show up on Google?
Every site we ship includes the technical foundations search engines look for: fast load times measured against Core Web Vitals, clean structure, proper metadata, a sitemap and structured data. That gets you indexed and competitive from day one. Rankings for competitive search terms then grow with content and reputation over time, and we'll be straight with you about what a brand-new site can and can't expect in its first months. If local customers are the point, we'll also set up your Google Business Profile properly, because for a lot of Kent businesses the map pack matters more than the blue links.
Are you actually local, and do you work outside Kent?
Both. We're based in Medway and work with businesses across Kent and the South East, so we can meet you if that's easier, and you always deal directly with the person building the site. We also work with clients elsewhere in the UK on exactly the same terms, because almost all of this happens over email and calls. What we won't do is publish a page for every town in the county pretending to a local presence we don't have.
Read this before you commit
What a website costs in the UK
Builders, freelancers, studios and agencies compared on real numbers, plus what drives a quote up.
Does my business need a website?
What a site does that a social page can't, when you honestly don't need one yet, and the sum to do first.
Demo sites you can click through
Complete builds, not mockups. Open them, measure them, tab through them with a keyboard.
Hosting and maintenance
What the £45 a month covers after launch: monitoring, backups, updates, security patches and fixes.
Talk to us about a site
Medway-based, working across Kent and the South East. A free quote and an honest opinion.
Related services
Let's build your website
Tell us what you do and what you want the site to achieve. We'll send back a clear plan and a free quote.
Start the conversation