Website development in Cardiff for businesses that have outgrown a template.

Web design decides how a site looks, reads and guides a visitor towards an enquiry. Website development is the engineering underneath: the logic, data, logins and connections that make a site behave like software.

Most small business sites need far more design than development. A brochure site with a contact form is a design job, and our web design service in Cardiff covers it on a fixed monthly package.

You need development when the site has to:

• show data that lives somewhere else, such as stock, property listings or availability
• let customers log in, upload documents or track a job
• calculate a price or quote from the answers someone gives
• send information into your CRM, accounts or job management software
• replace a spreadsheet or a manual process your team runs every day

If two or more of those apply, you are in development territory, and it pays to scope the work properly before anyone starts building.

These are the projects we take on most often.

Web applications and platforms

Browser-based tools your team or customers use every day: dashboards, booking systems, ordering flows and internal admin. Our web application development page goes into more detail.

Integrations and APIs

Connecting your website to the systems you already pay for. For Bayti Real Estates we built a real-time API integration to the property portal Bayut, so its listings are automated.

Client portals

A secure login where clients see their documents, project status, invoices or reports. Useful for professional services firms and property managers who answer the same "where are we up to?" emails every week.

Booking and quoting tools

Forms that do the arithmetic. A trades business can let a customer answer a few questions and see a guide price, with the job details landing in the CRM ready for a call back.

AI features inside your site

Assistants that answer common questions, route enquiries or summarise submissions. Where the job is mainly automation rather than a website, our AI automation in Cardiff page covers that side.

1. Discovery call on Zoom. You walk me through the process the site needs to support, the systems involved and what is currently done by hand.
2. Written scope. We set out what will be built, what it connects to, what is out of scope and an hour budget at £95 + VAT. Nothing starts until you agree it.
3. Highest-value part first. Larger projects are split into stages, so the piece that saves the most time or brings in the most work goes live first.
4. Testing against real data. Integrations are tested with your actual accounts and records before launch, because demo data hides the awkward cases.
5. Handover and support. You get a plain-English explanation of how everything connects and a clear arrangement for changes after launch.

Calls are recorded on Zoom so you can share them with your team. If you would rather meet in person, you are welcome at our Pontcanna office by arrangement.

It depends on what the site has to do. Anyone who quotes a custom build without asking questions is guessing, so here is how we price it.

• Scoped development: £95 + VAT an hour, with the scope and hour budget agreed in writing before work starts.
• Automation-led projects: where most of the value is in connecting tools and removing manual work, our AI and automation packages start at £500 + VAT. The AI automation Cardiff page has the details.
• Websites that mainly need design: fixed monthly packages from £350 + VAT, explained on the web design Cardiff page.

What pushes the hours up: the number of systems involved, how well documented their APIs are, user logins and permissions, and how many exceptions the process has. What brings them down: a clear process, one system of record and starting with the part that matters most.

Sometimes an off-the-shelf tool plus a small integration does the job for far less than a custom build. If a project will not pay for itself, I will tell you before you spend anything.

Plenty of agencies list web development as a service. These questions help you find out what they actually mean by it.

• Ask for an integration they have built. A real, named example with the systems involved. Ours is the Bayti Real Estates connection to Bayut.
• Ask how they scope. You want a written scope that lists what is excluded, plus an estimate you can check. A single number with no breakdown is a warning sign.
• Ask who maintains it. APIs change. Someone has to keep an eye on that after launch, and you should know who, and on what terms.
• Ask about security and data. The government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/26 found 43% of UK businesses identified a breach or attack in the previous 12 months. Logins, customer records and payment flows need a developer who takes that seriously.
• Ask who you will actually speak to. On larger agency projects, the person who sells the work is often a different person from the one who builds it.

Wales is a small business economy. Welsh Government figures show SMEs made up 99.3% of active enterprises in 2025, and micro businesses with fewer than ten staff made up 94.6% (source).

That shapes how development should be bought here. Very few Cardiff firms can justify a full-time developer, yet many run processes a well-built tool would speed up: a letting agent juggling portals, a trades firm quoting from a spreadsheet, a consultancy emailing documents back and forth.

For most, the sensible route is targeted development. Build the one tool or integration that removes the biggest bottleneck, pay for the hours it takes, and keep the rest of the site on a standard platform that is cheap to run and easy to update.

You do not need a technical specification. A good developer will help you write one. These five things make the first conversation far more useful:

1. The process in your own words. Walk through what happens today, step by step, including the workarounds.
2. The systems involved. A list of the software you use, such as your CRM, accounts package, booking tool or property portal.
3. Who will use it. Staff, customers or both, and roughly how many.
4. What success looks like. Hours saved, quotes sent faster, fewer errors or more enquiries.
5. Your must-haves and nice-to-haves. Splitting these early keeps the first stage lean and the budget honest.

I have spent fifteen years in websites and digital marketing, starting in sales and often running business development inside marketing roles. That background matters in development. I scope builds around what brings in money or saves time, and I explain the trade-offs in plain English.

Earlier in my career I worked on brands including Vodafone, Sainsbury's, Airbus and LVMH. I founded Roddy Digital in 2021, and I lead every engagement personally.

• Office at 11-13 Penhill Rd, Pontcanna, Cardiff CF11 9PQ
• Calls and progress meetings on Zoom, recorded so your team can catch up
• Design, development, SEO and automation in one place, so the build and the marketing pull in the same direction