How WebWise Actually Builds a Website: The Real Process, Start to Finish

No vague "discovery phase" jargon — the literal sequence of what happens, in what order, and how long each step actually takes

Most web design agency websites describe their process in language that sounds reassuring and means almost nothing: "discovery", "strategy", "ideation", "iteration". None of that tells a business owner what is actually going to happen to their money and their time. This article exists to fix that for WebWise specifically — a literal, step-by-step account of what happens from the moment you first get in touch to the moment your site goes live, written with enough specificity that you could hold us to it.

This kind of transparency is not a courtesy — it is the standard we believe every web design agency UK businesses are considering should be held to, and it is the same standard covered from the buyer's side in our companion guide, 10 Questions to Ask a Web Design Agency Before You Pay a Single Penny. If you read that guide and want to know specifically how WebWise answers each of those ten questions in practice, this article is the answer.

Step 1: The First Call — 15 Minutes, No Pitch Deck

Every engagement starts with a short call, typically 15 minutes, conducted over the phone, Zoom, or — for clients who prefer it — entirely over WhatsApp text. There is no slide deck and no sales script. The goal of this call is narrow and specific: understand what your business does, who your customers are, what is currently wrong with your online presence (or confirm you have nothing yet), and what a realistic, honest scope and price looks like for fixing it.

🔍 TRANSPARENCY — What you will and will not hear on this call

You will hear a direct answer to "can you actually help me, and roughly what will it cost?" within the first few minutes. You will not hear an extended pitch about WebWise's history, philosophy, or design awards. If your specific situation is outside what WebWise is well-suited for — a large multi-region e-commerce platform, for instance, as discussed honestly in our agency comparison guide — you will be told that directly, on the call, rather than being sold a scope that does not fit.

Step 2: The Written Scope and Fixed Quote

Within 24 to 48 hours of the first call, you receive a written scope — not a sales proposal with stock photography and vague promises, but a literal list: which pages will be built, what each page will contain, what integrations are included (booking systems, payment processing, WhatsApp, lead capture forms), what SEO foundation work is included, and the total fixed price. This document is what gets agreed before any deposit changes hands, and it is the document either party can point back to if there is ever a disagreement about what was promised.

24–48 hours — typical turnaround from the first call to receiving a written scope and fixed quote

Step 3: The Deposit and Build Slot

Once the scope is agreed, a 30% deposit books your specific build slot — because WebWise runs as a deliberately small, two-person studio taking on a limited number of active projects at any time, the deposit secures a genuine start date rather than a vague "we will get to it" queue position. The remaining 70% is due on launch day, after you have seen the live site and confirmed you are happy with it — not before.

Step 4: Content and Copy — What We Need From You, and What We Write

For most builds, you are not expected to write your own website copy. You provide the raw material — what you actually do, your pricing approach, your service area, any genuine credentials (Gas Safe, NICEIC, FMB, or equivalent for your trade or sector) — typically through a short written brief or a recorded voice note, whichever is easier for you. From that, the copy for every page is drafted, structured around the search-intent and conversion principles covered throughout this blog, and sent back for your review before anything is built around it.

🛠️ FIELD NOTE — Why we ask for credentials and specifics this early

As covered throughout our local SEO and E-E-A-T guides, the specific detail that makes a page rank and convert — a Gas Safe registration number, a specific response-time commitment, a specific year your business was established — has to be gathered before the page is written, not bolted on afterwards. Asking for this detail in Step 4, rather than treating it as an afterthought, is the difference between a generic page and one built to actually perform.

Step 5: The Build — What Actually Happens to the Code

Every site is hand-coded in Next.js — no WordPress themes, no Wix or Squarespace templates, as covered in detail in our studio overview article. During the build phase, you typically receive a staging link — a live, working preview of the site that only you can see — within the first week for most standard builds, so you are reviewing real pages rather than static mockups. Core Web Vitals performance (covered fully in our dedicated guide) is built in from the first commit, not optimised retroactively at the end.

Step 6: Technical Foundation — Built In, Not Bolted On

Before launch, every site receives the same technical foundation regardless of tier: LocalBusiness and Service schema markup (covered in our dedicated schema guide), Google Search Console and Analytics connected and verified, a sitemap submitted, SSL configured, and a Core Web Vitals check confirming the mobile Performance score sits in the green zone. This step is not billed as an optional add-on — it happens as a standard part of every build, because, as covered throughout this blog, a site without this foundation cannot rank regardless of how it looks.

Step 7: Review and Revision — What "One Round" Actually Means

Most WebWise builds include one structured round of revisions once the staging site is live: you go through every page, note anything you want changed — wording, layout, an image, a missing detail — and send that feedback as one consolidated list rather than a drip of separate messages. This single-round structure exists to keep the build moving toward a real launch date rather than drifting through open-ended, unlimited tweaking, which is one of the most common reasons web projects with vaguer agencies stretch on for months.

Step 8: Launch Day

On launch day, the domain is pointed to the new site, DNS is configured, SSL is confirmed live, and the final balance invoice is raised — after you have seen and approved the finished site, not before. From this point, the site is genuinely yours: the domain in your name, the code available to you, hosting on infrastructure that can be moved without a rebuild if you ever choose to work with someone else.

Step 9: What Happens After Launch

For clients who choose the optional care retainer (from £49/month, cancel any month), the relationship continues with hosting, security updates, and a monthly plain-English report covering rankings movement and enquiry volume. For clients who do not, the site remains fully functional and fully owned — there is no forced ongoing dependency. The choice to continue is genuinely optional, which is the same principle covered in our agency comparison guide: a client who stays does so because the relationship is working, not because they are contractually obligated to.

Conclusion: A Process You Can Hold Us To

Every step in this article is the literal, current WebWise process — not an idealised version written for marketing purposes. If your actual experience differs from any step described here, that is useful feedback we want to hear, not a contradiction we would try to talk around. This level of specificity is, we believe, what any UK web design agency should be willing to commit to in writing before taking a deposit.

If you want to start Step 1 — the 15-minute call, no pitch deck — the starting point is webwise.digital/contact.

Further reading: our agency comparison article for how this process and pricing compares to larger London web design agencies, and our buyer's checklist for the questions worth asking any agency before you commit.