Hiring a Web Developer in the UK: A Practical Project Brief

A business in London, Manchester or Birmingham can commission the same type of project from very different suppliers. A postcode does not establish the developer’s experience with your checkout, publishing workflow or internal system. Start with the problem, the users and the expected result.

Write a one-page brief with the current URL, the three most important user tasks, required integrations, who provides content and the launch constraint. State whether the work is a new build, a repair or an ongoing maintenance engagement. These details make proposals comparable.

For a publishing site, ask the supplier to explain how an editor updates a page and previews it safely. For a shop, ask how product variants, stock and payment failures are handled. For a custom application, ask how permissions are enforced and what happens when an integration is unavailable.

Request relevant work that the supplier is permitted to share. Ask what they personally delivered and what limitations remained. A screenshot shows an interface; a clear explanation of decisions and failure handling gives you more information about engineering judgment.

List the personal information the proposed system collects, where it is stored, which third parties receive it and who can access it. Record retention, access removal, backups and the response to a deletion request. These are practical design questions, not a compliance certificate.

Use the ICO’s current guidance and appropriate professional advice to establish the obligations that apply to your organization and suppliers. Do not accept a blanket “GDPR compliant” promise as a substitute for an agreed data flow and documented responsibilities. Hosting location by itself does not settle every privacy question.

Ask for the currency, tax treatment, payment milestones and recurring charges in writing. If a proposal is in GBP and another is in a different currency, record the exchange assumption and date instead of treating the totals as identical. Include plugins, hosting, content work, maintenance and handover.

Compare an agency and an independent developer on the resources your project needs. Parallel design and development may justify a team; a tightly defined repair may suit one specialist. There is no supported city-specific hourly-rate survey in this article, and no fixed percentage saving is promised.

Agree the hours when both sides are available, including how daylight-saving changes affect the overlap. Name the person who can approve scope and the person who handles urgent faults. A weekly written progress note should distinguish completed work, remaining work, decisions needed and risks.

Keep source control and deployment access in accounts your business can recover. Share development access through individual accounts with appropriate permissions. The handover should include environment setup, build instructions, backups and a list of services that require renewal.

Choose representative tasks and test them with the people who will use the site. Include keyboard navigation, readable error messages, contact delivery, permission boundaries and a mobile purchase or enquiry journey. Refer to WCAG when agreeing accessibility scope rather than relying on a badge or an automated score alone.

For businesses in different UK cities, the useful distinction is often the actual service model: opening hours, delivery areas, booking rules or customer needs. Supply those facts in the brief. Creating a separate city page is justified only when it provides information that helps that audience.