Why a clinic website costs more than “just a website”
A practice owner googling “how much does a website cost” sees numbers from £300 to £15,000 — with nothing explaining the gap. The difference isn't design. A clinic website is four systems a regular corporate site doesn't have.
1. Online booking that actually works. A large share of booking calls land outside opening hours — and go nowhere. A “leave your number” form doesn't fix it: younger patients don't want phone calls at all. Working online booking means picking a service, a practitioner and a time slot in 2 clicks, an SMS confirmation for the patient and a notification for reception. In the quote, that's an integration with your practice management system or CRM — £200 to £500 each.
2. A practitioner directory with schedules. Patients don't book “the clinic” — they book a person. Cards with photos, credentials, specialisms and a live schedule are a separate data structure in the CMS, one your practice manager updates without a developer.
3. A transparent price list that's easy to update. Clinics that hide prices lose patients at the comparison stage: opacity reads as “expensive”. A structured price list managed from the CMS — your marketer updates fees in 2 minutes.
4. Compliance. CQC expectations, GMC/GDC advertising guidance, UK GDPR consent for patient data. Not a checkbox — incorrectly handled medical websites draw real regulatory attention.
Everything else — design, build quality, speed, local SEO — is the same as any good website. But those four systems add £1,500–3,000 versus a regular corporate site. That's why a “£500 website” and a clinic website are different products.
A core clinic website quote: £3,500 line by line
| Line item | What's in it | Share of quote |
|---|---|---|
| Structure & copy | brief, competitor analysis in your area, launch copywriting | ~15% |
| Design | a custom layout for your clinic, 2 rounds of revisions | ~20% |
| Build | frontend, CMS (Sanity), load time under 1.5s | ~30% |
| Online booking | booking form + integration with your CRM / practice system | ~15% |
| Practitioner directory & price list | CMS-managed data structures | ~10% |
| SEO & launch | local SEO for “dentist + area”, MedicalOrganization schema, Google Business Profile, analytics | ~10% |
Plus a year of warranty: fixes, updates and advice are in the price, not a separate invoice.
For a solo practice at the start, an £800 landing page may be enough — a separate format that grows into a full site later without a rebuild.
Where you can save — and where you can't
You can save on:
- Photography — launch with good stock and phone shots, add a professional shoot later
- A blog — the core site works without one; blog and SEO pages come after the main funnel works
- Languages — if 95% of your patients speak English, a second language can wait
You can't save on:
- Online booking — without it the site stays a brochure that doesn't take load off the phone line
- Mobile — 70%+ of clinic traffic is on phones
- The price list — “call for prices” means the patient left to compare and didn't come back
- Compliance — regulatory follow-up costs more than an hour of a solicitor's time
A real example: Efedra Clinic, Odesa
A clinic with two arms — dentistry and aesthetic medicine — came to us with an old site that produced no enquiries. We rebuilt the structure around the two arms, added online booking and a CMS the team manages themselves. Six months on: 1,460 Google visits versus 340 in the previous half-year, impressions up from 1,820 to 13,000, and 3.2× more enquiries. Full breakdown — in the Efedra case study.
