I paid for a website and get nothing. What went wrong?

Why is my website not getting any traffic after I paid for it?

Because building a website and making a website findable are two different jobs, and you almost certainly only bought the first one. A site going live does not tell Google it exists, does not create a page for each service you sell, does not name the towns you cover, and does not set up a Google Business Profile. None of that is included as standard in a UK web design package, and most quotes say so if you read them again now.

Think of it as fitting out a shop. The designer built you a good shop: clean, well lit, works on a phone. Nobody was paid to put up the signs on the main road or tell anyone it had opened. The shop is real, the stock is good, and nobody walks past. Nobody says this out loud when you are buying, because “you will also need to do a load of unglamorous visibility work afterwards” is a terrible sales line.

What does a web design quote actually include, and what does it leave out?

Published UK package descriptions are fairly consistent: the quote covers designing, building, testing and launching the site, plus basic technical setup such as indexation basics, metadata foundations and a crawl-friendly structure. What it commonly excludes is copywriting, content restructuring, photography, redirect mapping when addresses change, integrations, and any optimisation after launch. That list of exclusions is, more or less, the list of things that get you found.

This is the table to read twice. The left column is what you paid for. The right column is what nobody was paid to do.

Two things follow. If your site is quiet, the cause is far more likely to sit in the right-hand column than in the build. And almost everything in that column can be added to the website you already own, so you do not need to buy the shop again.

How much should I have paid for a website in the UK?

Published UK price pages in September 2026 put template-led packages at £300–£1,500, freelancer-built business websites at £1,500–£3,500, agency brochure and lead-generation sites at £3,000–£8,000, ecommerce at £5,000–£20,000 and bespoke portals at £10,000 and up, with Media Village stating that most brochure-style business websites land between £3,000 and £6,000. Those are the numbers to hold your invoice against.

The same picture shows up priced by time. Receptive Media publishes a day rate of £450 plus VAT (£540 including it), working a five-page brochure site out at £1,800–£3,600, a twenty-page site at £4,500–£9,000 and an ecommerce build at £8,100–£18,000. Fixed-price sellers land in the same band: Brambla publishes £1,200 for five pages, £1,500 for eight and £1,800 for twelve, with custom builds at £2,500–£8,000 and up.

The costs that carry on after launch

Running costs are quoted separately and they are real. Brambla publishes care plans at £65, £125 and £245 a month for hosting, security, backups and content updates, and a separate SEO service from £95 a month. DIY website builders come in at roughly £10–£50 a month. Hollis Web publishes pay-monthly websites at £55 for a single page, £75 for five pages and £105 for an eight-page premium build, and prices two of the commonest add-ons at around £120 a page for written content and about £400 for professional photography.

If those ongoing numbers are new to you, it is worth reading our separate guides on what website hosting costs and what website maintenance costs, because a quiet website plus an unclear monthly bill is a very common combination.

The ten-minute diagnostic: five checks that tell you what is missing

Before you fix anything, or argue with anyone, find out what is actually missing. Five checks, no tools, no cost. Do them in order and write down which ones you fail.

1. Is your site in Google at all?

Search site:yourdomain.co.uk in Google, using your own domain. That lists every page of yours that Google has in its index. If nothing comes back, Google does not know you exist, and nothing else on this list matters yet. The proper version of this check is Google Search Console, which is free to set up and shows you what Google sees from then on.

2. Do you appear for what you do, in your town?

Open a private browsing window and search what a customer would type: “electrician Nuneaton”, “maths tutor Guildford”, your version of it. Anywhere in the first couple of pages? On the map at the top? The private window matters, because your own browser flatters you.

3. Does your site name your services and your areas?

Read your own homepage coldly, as a stranger would. Could someone tell exactly what you do and exactly where you do it? “Quality workmanship across the local area” fails this test, and so does “a friendly, reliable service for all your needs”. Count your service pages: if there is one page listing eight services rather than eight pages, that is your biggest single gap. Our guides on writing a service page that gets found and creating location pages cover the fix.

4. Is there a Google Business Profile, and is it connected?

Search your business name. If there is no panel down the right-hand side with your details, map location, opening hours and reviews, you are missing a large, free piece of local visibility. If there is a panel but it points at the wrong website, or has no website at all, that is a five-minute fix with a disproportionate effect.

5. Is anything measuring enquiries?

Usually the answer is no. Analytics may be installed, because installing it is inside the quote, but nobody defined what counts as an enquiry, which means even the enquiries you do get teach you nothing about where they came from. If you cannot say how many people filled in your form last month, you are guessing, and so is anyone you hire.

6. Has anything changed since the site went live?

This one is new, and it catches out people who used to get enquiries and now do not. Was the site rebuilt, moved, or restructured? If page addresses changed without redirects, or a staging setting that blocks search engines was left switched on, a site that was performing can vanish. That is a different problem with a different fix, and it is worth ruling out before you assume you were never visible.

However many of those you failed, that is your list. Every item on it has a free step-by-step guide on this site, and you can do the lot yourself without paying anybody, including us.

How long does it take for a new website to show on Google?

Google's own documentation says crawling “can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks”, and warns that requesting a crawl “does not guarantee that inclusion in search results will happen instantly or even at all”. So a fortnight of silence on a brand new site is normal and not evidence of anything.

Six months of silence is a different matter. By then, if check one in the diagnostic comes back empty, the issue is not patience. Nobody submitted the site, or there is nothing on it worth ranking for the things people actually search. Our guide on why your website is not showing on Google works through the causes in order.

Was I ripped off, or did the designer deliver what was quoted?

Honestly: sometimes ripped off, but less often than it feels at three in the morning. There are genuine bad cases: an overpriced template sold as a bespoke build, a builder who took the deposit and vanished, a site left half-finished, written promises about Google that were never kept. If that is your story, you have a real complaint and you should put it in writing.

Far more often, the designer did exactly what the quote said. The quote said design and build. They designed and built. The findability work was not deliberately skipped; it was never in the job, and nobody explained that it was a separate job with its own cost. You were not defrauded so much as under-informed. That is cold comfort, but it is a genuinely different problem, and it has a much cheaper solution than a solicitor.

The test is simple and unsentimental. Get the quote out, read what it said it would deliver, then look at the site. If the two match, you have a scope problem rather than a fraud problem, and the money you want back is money you would only have to spend again.

Can I get a refund from my web designer? Where a UK business actually stands

This section is general information, not legal advice. If real money is at stake, take proper advice.

The first thing to get right, because it is the thing most people get wrong: the Consumer Rights Act 2015 probably does not apply to you. Section 2(3) of that Act defines a consumer as “an individual acting for purposes that are wholly outside that individual's trade, business, craft or profession”. A sole trader or a limited company buying a website for the business is not acting outside their trade. So the consumer protections you have read about, including the short-term right to reject, are not the ones in play.

What does apply to a business buying services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is the contract itself, backed by the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982. Section 13 implies a term that where the supplier acts in the course of a business, the service will be carried out “with reasonable care and skill”. Section 14 implies that, where no time was fixed, the work will be done within a reasonable time. Section 15 implies that, where no price was fixed, a reasonable charge is payable. Scotland has its own equivalent position, so if you are in Scotland take local advice.

Read against those tests, the two situations separate cleanly:

• Probably not a breach. The site was designed, built, works and launched, but it does not rank. Marketing that was never in the contract cannot be a failure to perform the contract.
• Possibly a breach. The site does not work on a phone, forms do not send, it cannot be indexed because a setting nobody removed is blocking it, it was abandoned unfinished, or written promises about rankings or timescales were broken.

If you think you are in the second group, the practical order is: put the complaint in writing with the quote attached and say specifically what you want; give a deadline; keep everything. Under section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980 an action founded on simple contract must be brought within six years of the cause of action arising, so there is usually time, but do not sit on it.

If it goes further, the scale is public. GOV.UK publishes the court fees for a money claim: £35 for claims up to £300, £70 for £500.01–£1,000, £115 for £1,500.01–£3,000, £205 for £3,000.01–£5,000 and £455 for £5,000.01–£10,000, then 5% of the claim above that. Interest on a non-commercial debt is usually 8%. For a disputed claim of £10,000 or less you will be told you must attend mediation, organised by the court at no cost, which is quicker than a hearing and settles a lot of these.

Should I fix the website I have, or start again?

Fix it, in the large majority of cases, because everything in the right-hand column of that table is content and connections, and both can be added to a site that already exists: service pages, plainer wording, named areas, a Business Profile, working measurement. The money you spent is not wasted. It bought you the shop, and the signposts cost your time rather than another build.

The exception is real, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Some platforms genuinely cannot support what you need. If the site cannot be indexed at all, is unusable on a phone, will not let you add or edit pages without paying someone each time, or you simply cannot get access to it, a rebuild may be the right call. That is a minority of cases, and worth confirming before you spend, not after.

The order matters here. Diagnose, then fix the cheap things, then judge the platform on what is left. Starting with “get a new website” is how people end up paying twice for the same silence. If you are still not sure which camp you are in, how to tell whether your website is actually working is the sanity check, and why your website is not getting enquiries covers the case where you do get visitors but no calls.

What to do first, in order

Do them in this sequence. Each one makes the next one more useful, and the first three are free.

• Set up Search Console. You cannot fix what you cannot see. It tells you what Google has indexed, what it has not, and what people searched before they found you.
• Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. For a local service business this is usually the fastest visible change, and it costs nothing but an afternoon.
• Write one proper page per service. This is the single biggest improvement for most small business sites, and it is the item most reliably missing from the original quote.
• Name your areas in normal sentences. Not a list of forty towns in the footer. The places you actually work, in the text, where a person would read them.
• Make sure something counts enquiries. Then, a month later, you will be arguing from evidence rather than from feeling.
• Only then decide whether the platform is holding you back.

Common questions

Can I get a refund from my web designer?

Usually not, if they built what the quote described. A business buying services is not a consumer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which defines a consumer as an individual acting wholly or mainly outside their trade or business. Your protection sits in the contract itself and in the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982, which implies a term that the work is done with reasonable care and skill. Missing marketing that was never quoted for is not a breach. This is general information, not legal advice.

How long does it take for a new website to show on Google?

Google's own documentation says crawling can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and that requesting a crawl does not guarantee that inclusion in search results will happen instantly or even at all. So a fortnight of silence on a brand new site is normal. Six months of silence is not, and usually means nobody ever told Google the site existed or gave it pages worth ranking.

How do I check if my website is indexed by Google?

Search site:yourdomain.co.uk in Google. That lists the pages of yours Google has in its index. If nothing comes back, Google does not have you, and no amount of design will change that. The reliable version of the same check is Google Search Console, which is free to set up and shows you which pages are indexed, which are not, and why.

Should I have paid extra for SEO when I had the website built?

Not necessarily extra, but it should have been discussed. Published UK package descriptions usually include basic technical setup such as indexation basics, metadata foundations and a crawl-friendly structure, while excluding copywriting, content restructuring, redirect mapping and post-launch optimisation. The technical part matters, but it is the excluded part, the words on the pages, that usually decides whether you are found.

Who owns my website if I paid someone to build it?

It depends on what the contract says, and a surprising number of small businesses do not own the domain, the hosting account or the design files they paid for. Check whose name the domain is registered in and whether you have administrator access to the hosting and the content system. Sort this out before any fight about refunds, because ownership is what lets you walk away.

How much should I pay for a website in the UK?

Published UK price pages in September 2026 put template-led packages at £300 to £1,500, freelancer-built business sites at £1,500 to £3,500, and agency brochure sites at £3,000 to £8,000, with one agency stating that most brochure-style business sites land between £3,000 and £6,000. Day-rate agencies quote around £450 a day plus VAT. Price does not predict enquiries.

Why has my website disappeared from Google?

A site that used to appear and now does not has usually been changed rather than punished. The common causes are a rebuild that changed every page address without redirects, a staging setting left switched on that blocks search engines, or pages that were quietly deleted in a redesign. Search Console will tell you which of those it is within a few minutes.

Sources, all checked 15 September 2026. Price tiers and the included/excluded lists: Media Village, “Website Design Packages (UK): What's Included & What's Not”, published 9 March 2026 and updated 30 July 2026. Day rates and time-based project bands: Receptive Media, “Web Design Pricing”. Fixed-price builds, care plans and DIY builder costs: Brambla, “How Much Does a Website Cost UK”, updated 9 September 2026. Pay-monthly websites, content-writing and photography add-on prices: Hollis Web, “How much does a website cost in the UK?”, published 25 November 2024 and updated 27 August 2026. Crawling timescales and the no-guarantee wording: Google Search Central, “Ask Google to recrawl your URLs”, last updated 10 December 2025. Legal position: Consumer Rights Act 2015 section 2(3); Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 sections 13, 14 and 15; Limitation Act 1980 section 5 — all as published on legislation.gov.uk. Court fees, the 8% interest rate and the £10,000 mediation threshold: GOV.UK, “Make a court claim for money” and “Respond to a court claim for money: resolve the claim through mediation”. Question phrasings validated against Google UK autocomplete on 15 September 2026. One figure was deliberately removed rather than repeated: we could not establish from a primary source how many UK businesses currently have no website, so that claim no longer appears. Nothing on this page is legal advice.