Do you actually work with businesses in Edinburgh?

Yes, remotely. I work with British clients from Islamabad, quoting in GBP and invoicing in GBP. I have no office, address or phone number in Edinburgh and will not pretend otherwise. If your project needs someone physically present, hire locally — I will say so in the first reply rather than after a deposit.

Do I need to provide the content and images?

Content, yes — you know your business and I do not. I will restructure and edit what you send so it reads for the web, and I will tell you where a section is missing. Photography is worth paying a local photographer for; stock images of people in offices are recognisable as stock and quietly cost you credibility.

What currency will I be invoiced in?

GBP. Quotes, milestones and the final invoice are all written in GBP so you are never comparing a converted figure against a local supplier's. Regarding tax: VAT at 20% once you are registered — my invoices are outside the scope of UK VAT and you account for them under the reverse charge.

How much does a website cost in Edinburgh?

A business website starts from £65 and goes live in about three days. An e-commerce build starts from £120 in around seven days, and a custom application from £160 in ten. Those are starting figures — the exact number is fixed in writing once scope is agreed, and it does not move after that.

How do you handle our customers' data under UK GDPR?

Your customer data is governed by UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and sending it to a developer in Pakistan is a restricted transfer. That is resolved by a pre-signed DPA with a completed UK International Data Transfer Addendum, published on this site and pre-signed before you send an enquiry — not drafted after you ask about it.

Who owns the website when it is finished?

You do, completely. The domain is registered in your name, hosting sits in your account, the code lives in a repository you control, and any payment provider account is opened in your business name. Credentials are handed to you as they are created rather than at the end, so you are never locked out of your own site.

How long does a Edinburgh project actually take?

Three days for a business site, seven for a store, ten for a custom application. That holds because the process is fixed rather than improvised and because your content exists on day one. What stretches a build is almost never the code — it is waiting for copy, logos and photographs, so those are requested before the clock starts.

Scotland · United Kingdom

Custom website development in Edinburgh

A template is the right answer more often than developers like to admit. This page is about the times it is not — when the thing your business does has a shape no theme author anticipated, and forcing it into one costs more in permanent workarounds than building it properly would have cost once. For Edinburgh businesses, quoted in GBP from $200, typically live in 10 days.

What custom website development includes for a Edinburgh business

Fixed scope, agreed in writing before development starts. From $200, typically live in 10 days.

A written specification agreed before any code, including what is explicitly out of scope
Custom data model designed around your business logic rather than a theme author’s assumptions
Hand-written PHP 8 and MySQL — no page builder, no multi-purpose theme, no plugin stack to maintain
Front end in Tailwind CSS with Alpine.js only where interaction genuinely needs it
Admin interface a non-technical person can operate without a training course
Technical SEO built in during the build rather than retrofitted afterwards
Source code in a repository you own, with deployment and rollback documented
30 days of snag fixes after go-live

The terms for a British client

Starting price	From $200, quoted and invoiced in GBP
Typical timeline	10 days once content is supplied
Tax position	VAT at 20% once you are registered — my invoices are outside the scope of UK VAT and you account for them under the reverse charge
Data protection	UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 — resolved by a pre-signed DPA with a completed UK International Data Transfer Addendum
Payment rails available	Stripe, GoCardless for Direct Debit, and Klarna or Clearpay where basket sizes justify it
My day in Edinburgh time	05:00–14:00 — about 5 hours of overlap

Why this matters for United Kingdom specifically

UK local search is the most saturated in the English-speaking world, so a merely competent site does not win the job — the quote form does. Every UK build I ship is specified around the enquiry step first and the homepage second.

What actually ships when a Edinburgh project goes live

A handover for a Edinburgh client is not a link and a login. It is the repository, the hosting account in your name, the domain registered to you, the payment provider account under your business, and a written record of every credential as it was created rather than dumped in one email at the end.

The test I apply is uncomfortable but correct: if I disappeared tomorrow, could another developer pick this up on Monday without calling me? If the answer is no, the handover is not finished. That standard is why the documentation takes a day I do not bill separately — it is part of the build, not an upsell.

Retail and e-commerce in Edinburgh

A store is judged at the checkout, not the homepage. For United Kingdom that means the payment methods have to match what people actually use — Stripe, GoCardless for Direct Debit, and Klarna or Clearpay where basket sizes justify it — and the cart has to survive a slow connection and a page refresh. Most abandoned baskets are not indecision; they are a checkout that broke and gave no reason why.

The second issue is stock truth. A product page saying "in stock" when it is not costs you the sale and the customer, and the fix is unglamorous plumbing between wherever your stock actually lives and the storefront. That is worth a day of work far more than the product photography carousel is.

A redesign that quietly deleted the rankings

The classic disaster: a new site launches, looks far better, and organic enquiries fall off a cliff within a fortnight. The cause is almost always identical — the URLs changed and nothing was redirected, so every page that had accumulated years of authority now returns a 404.

Preventing it is a redirect map built before launch: every old URL to its closest new equivalent with a 301, and anything without an equivalent pointed at the nearest relevant page rather than the homepage. If your Edinburgh site is being redesigned by anyone, ask to see that map. If it does not exist, that is the entire risk in one document.

What I am not claiming about Edinburgh

I have no office, postal address or phone number in Edinburgh
I cannot meet you in person, and if that is a requirement you should hire locally
I am not claiming existing clients in Edinburgh specifically — my live work is listed on the work page and you can check it
Nothing on this page is a guarantee of search rankings, which no developer can honestly offer