Web Development Company in London

Start with the journey the site has to carry, because that is what separates these: a scoped marketing site at London rates, a mid-market e-commerce or fintech marketing platform with custom integrations, or a full enterprise rebuild with headless commerce, multi-region edge deployment, complex CMS workflows, and FCA financial promotion approval gating. Scope drivers include discovery, Figma design, Next.js build, a headless CMS, PSD2 or open banking journeys, a tokenised design system, accessibility audit, and Lighthouse 90+ delivery on real 4G. London rates reflect the senior contractor market and IR35 off-payroll overhead. We give fixed-fee proposals rather than open T and M estimates, and most engagements qualify partially under the April 2024 merged R&D scheme when there is genuine technical uncertainty.

Yes. Every London engagement ships against WCAG 2.2 AA as a baseline. For public sector clients we treat the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 as a hard contract obligation, producing the accessibility statement the regulations require, running monthly axe-core and Pa11y audits in CI, and engaging real assistive technology users (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, Dragon) for usability testing rather than relying solely on automated scanners which catch around thirty percent of issues. For private sector clients the Equality Act 2010 still applies and discrimination claims against inaccessible websites have been litigated. We document conformance, known issues, and remediation timelines in a statement aligned with the Cabinet Office template.

The ICO has been increasingly explicit since 2023 that consent must be as easy to refuse as to accept, that legitimate interests cannot be used for advertising cookies, and that pre-ticked or auto-confirmed consent is non-compliant. We deploy consent management with Cookiebot, OneTrust, Cassie, or a custom React layer integrated with Google Consent Mode v2 for clients still on GA4. Reject-all is a single click matching accept-all visually. Vendor lists are surfaced under TCF v2.2. Cookie audits run quarterly against real browser sessions. We also document the lawful basis for any cookie or tracker in the Records of Processing Activities, because the ICO has fined operators where the website claims consent but the RoPA contradicts it.

Yes. We have shipped open banking AISP and PISP flows via TrueLayer, Plaid UK, Yapily, and Tink, with PSD2 strong customer authentication using FIDO2 passkeys, push-to-mobile, or SMS OTP fallbacks where the FCA permits. Customer journeys are designed to survive the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE) customer experience guidelines and the FCA's PS21/19 final rules. We handle SCA exemptions (low-value, trusted beneficiaries, recurring transactions, secure corporate payment processes) where they reduce friction without breaching the regulation, and we instrument abandonment so product can see where SCA is leaking conversion. Designs survive FCA financial promotion review when the product carries a Consumer Duty trigger.

Google's UK search results have been weighting Core Web Vitals more heavily since the 2024 INP rollout, and London 4G traces from EE, Three, Vodafone, and O2 are slower than the synthetic Lighthouse defaults. We target LCP under 1.8 seconds, INP under 200ms, and CLS under 0.05 on the 75th percentile of real users measured through Chrome User Experience Report data, not lab synthetic numbers. Practically that means Next.js Image with AVIF and WebP, font subsetting, server components for above-the-fold content, edge caching in LHR, and JavaScript budgets enforced in CI with size-limit. London retail clients see meaningful conversion and SEO uplift once they cross those thresholds, particularly against Boohoo, ASOS, and Hut Group competitors who are already there.

For most London marketing teams we recommend headless WordPress, Sanity, or Contentful. Headless WordPress keeps the authoring experience your team already knows while decoupling the front end to Next.js for speed and security. Sanity gives developer-friendly content modelling, a strong real-time editing experience, and a generous free tier. Contentful is the right choice for larger editorial teams with localisation needs across UK, EU, and US markets. Storyblok is a strong visual-editing alternative if marketing wants in-page edits. We avoid Drupal unless there is a specific public sector or pharma reason, and we steer clients away from Squarespace, Wix, and Webflow for anything that needs FCA financial promotion approval, complex commerce, or genuine scale.

Yes. Default hosting is AWS eu-west-2 (London) primary with eu-west-1 (Ireland) as failover, Azure UK South (London) and UK West (Cardiff), Vercel with the LHR1 edge region, or Cloudflare with UK data localisation enabled. Databases sit in the same region as the application, with point-in-time recovery and cross-region read replicas only where the client signs off on the transfer mechanics. Cross-border data flows to the US rely on the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or Standard Contractual Clauses with a Transfer Risk Assessment. We document residency in the Data Processing Agreement and the Records of Processing Activities so the ICO has a clear answer if it ever asks.

A typical London e-commerce rebuild on Shopify Hydrogen, Commerce Layer, Saleor, or Medusa takes sixteen to twenty-six weeks from kickoff to launch, depending on catalogue size, integration depth (ERP, OMS, WMS, payment, tax via Avalara or Vertex, fraud via Riskified or Signifyd), and the volume of historical SEO equity that must be preserved through 301 redirects. Week 1 to 4 is discovery, IA, and Figma. Week 5 to 14 is build and integration. Week 15 to 20 is UAT, performance hardening to Core Web Vitals targets, and accessibility remediation to WCAG 2.2 AA. Week 21 onward is launch, redirect monitoring through Search Console, and a stabilisation sprint. Black Friday and Boxing Day launches require an additional buffer.