Makilo
Makilo
- Are you looking for Web Design in Milton Keynes, responsive websites, optimised to be useful, designed to reflect both you and your users.
- Makilo (As in ‘mike kilo’)
A web agency that’s MK through and through. We love it here, almost as much as this lot love what we do:
- Introduction
Testimonials
(2024 – )
Website Design Milton Keynes
- Makilo can construct visual identities, build creative strategies, design/develop both complex and necessary digital products and services. We optimise projects and focus on digital as a tool rather than a ‘solution’.
- WordPress / Website Development / Website Design / Website Audits / Web Hosting / Web App Development / Visual Identity Design / UX Design / Updates / UI Design / Strategy / SEO / Scoping / Project Scoping / Product Strategy / Plugins / Performance / MVP Development / Market Research / Link Building / Laravel / Interaction Design / Information Architecture / Graphic Design / Google Search Console / Google Analytics / Full-Stack Development / E-Commerce Development / Digital Strategy / Digital Development / Development / Design / Customer Journey Mapping / Creative Direction / Copywriting / Content Design / Concept Development / CMS Integration / Business Analysis / Branding / Brand Strategy / Art Direction / Animation / Apps / Audits
- Resources
Selected Services
(2016 -)
- We do it all as a small team, next to an ancient woodland in the heart of Milton Keynes. Drop in for a coffee if you’d like.
- We also support the best of the creative sector and technology community in and around Milton Keynes. Meaning we’re lucky enough to have made more than a few friends. You should go and check them out here:
We get to live and work in a fast growing city full of collaborators
- A lot of what we do is build websites in and around Milton Keynes. Luckily, when we started our company over 10 years ago, that was also our aim; we wanted ‘MK Representation’ to be at the heart of the services we offered. Milton Keynes is full of incredible organisations looking to make a mark or a difference. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you’re another!
- Output
Projects + Clients
(2016 -)
On digital projects that often feel like a privilege. Here’s a few of them:
Helping secure £2M for a leading national charity
Insulating an Institution for years to come
3,000,000 Trees and counting...
It’s easier on a tablet than using your fingers
Looking out for Everybody’s Nightclub
This Weekend, Next Weekend, Every Weekend.
Keeping things moving with Dawsongroup
Old methods new vehicles green futures
Are you in need access to, solid, pragmatic, local service provision?
- Makilo is us, so we take pride in our transparency. We're an agency that won't be for everyone, but neither will we dress that up with fluff like bean bags and an office dog listed on the team page. Come and meet us - see if we're a good fit. If we're not, chances are we'll know someone in our network who might be.
- Company
Our team
(2016 –
-
Creative and Strategic Lead,
Chris co-founded the agency and leads on digital strategy and design, helping clients create more effective digital products through over a decade of hands-on project experience.
- Technical and Development Lead, Tom co-founded the agency and brings over a decade of senior development experience, leading the technical delivery of complex websites and digital platforms.
- Patrick oversees client relationships and digital security, combining technical expertise with a service-first approach developed through years of designing, building, and supporting websites.
Underpass structure at the eastern end of Midsummer Boulevard in Milton Keynes, showing design elements from Derek Walker’s original plan including clear pedestrian access and structural order. Grids, columns, and lighting placed with purpose, not just decoration.
Website Design Milton Keynes:
A Creative Agency Born In The City
- About
Page Body
- We build websites in Milton Keynes with a difference. When we started designing websites and building our company over 10 years ago, we wanted ‘representation’ to be at the heart of what we did.
Our name was the first step, ‘Makilo’ comes from ‘Mike – Milton’ and ‘Kilo – Keynes’. We’ve always recognised that Milton Keynes is a uniquely designed place and wanted to reflect that from the start.
But Milton Keynes is a unique design story.
A very British take on the famous Los Angeles grid blueprint, our iconic roundabouts are almost the first thing that comes to mind. But, If you’re used to driving in and out of Milton Keynes, you’ll have noticed the signs that adorn those famous roundabouts saying ‘Different by Design’.
When people think about Milton Keynes, they think about the grid system, redways and underpasses, the old Point, the unusual Xscape building, the mile long shopping centre… and yes, the Concrete Cows.
Each and every one of these is its own design icon. Aiming to make its mark on or in the city.
And as more and more amazing companies make Milton Keynes their home, we wanted to be sure that the city’s thriving and growing business scene had websites and digital assets that reflected their home and that attitude.
Recreated 1970s Milton Keynes Development Corporation hand gate between MK Gallery and Theatre, part of the City Club Project by Gareth Jones and Nils Norman, reflecting the city’s original leisure infrastructure plans.
Reproduction Milton Keynes globe streetlight next to MK Gallery’s 2019 redesign by 6a architects, referencing the original 1970s city lighting by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation.
‘2B Series No.2’ by Bernard Schottlander, 1983, supporting the Milton Keynes Development Corporation’s vision of embedding art into the city’s landscape.
Building a Name For Website Design In Milton Keynes
- Companies like ours use landing pages like this one to validate what we offer against what prospective customers like you, a visitor to this page, 'need' in the eyes of search engines.
This process can be frustrating, mainly as a ‘call to action’ above the fold, and a large page with lots of text can often also be off putting for some people, ourselves included. However, bear with us…
Reading this far means you’ve already put yourself amongst a pretty exclusive percentage of web visitors looking for agencies in Milton Keynes. And it’s from that percentage, almost all of our customers over the last 10ish years have emerged. (That’s also true of the clients we’ve worked with.)
‘2B Series No.2’ by Bernard Schottlander, 1983, supporting the Milton Keynes Development Corporation’s vision of embedding art into the city’s landscape.
A Creative Agency in Milton Keynes
- Our websites are tools for engaging with prospects; sometimes, those visitors need a light touch, and other times, to be visually shouted at or exposed to technical subtleties in the way a page is designed or developed. Creativity, quite simply, is at the heart of what we offer.
It’s different depending on needs and circumstances – rarely does an ‘off the shelf’ website wrapped up in a neat package and framed as a commodity you shop around for actually ‘work’.
So first, for staying on a webpage forcibly designed to attract website design customers in MK for more than 3 seconds, we thank you – wholeheartedly.
B2B website design in Milton Keynes: A company that cares about other companies
Web convention and B2B website design now mandate that now’s the moment we reward you with an offer or a discount code — one that relates explicitly to Website Design in Milton Keynes alongside a promise that we’ll do the same for your organisation in 30 days or your money back, etc etc.
Fortunately for you, you’re not getting one.
We care about your website far too deeply for that. Here’s why.
Hotel La Tour, Milton Keynes (pHp Architects, 2022). The east facade features a 30-metre illuminated circle in stainless steel, designed to align with the sunrise on the summer solstice.
Original globe lamp and planting inside Centre:MK shopping centre, Milton Keynes (1979). Designed by Derek Walker Associates, these elements carry the city’s exterior public realm details into the interior retail environment.
Detail of curved glass and metal façade, MK Gallery extension by 6a architects (2019), Milton Keynes.
For us, Milton Keynes is a place that
still feels full of potential, one where organisations can make a mark if they think creatively. There’s room to question where
a website, and what it does, fits into business strategy.
For us, Milton Keynes is a place that still feels full of potential, one where organisations can make a mark if they think creatively. There’s room to question where a website, and what it does, fits into business strategy.
Choosing the right Milton Keynes-based Website Design Agency
- We often ask people looking for Websites or Graphic Design in Milton Keynes if what they're searching for is more than just getting a 'build' done and if tackling that 'project' might open up some previously available opportunities.
Our aim is to help you avoid knee-jerk purchases, which feel expensive enough to feel like you’re ‘doing something’ but likely insufficient to make any real headway on your goals or aspirations.
Our business also needs to avoid that situation; there is nothing to be gained from engaging with a project that we or any other design agency in Milton Keynes doesn’t need to do.
In a growing city full of both vibrant new businesses and established corporates (some who’ve moved here because of specific economic opportunities), B2B websites in Milton Keynes built with off the shelf templates aren’t always enough to cut in a competitive marketplace.
Adding to that mess hurts everyone and devalues our industry, so we’ve never done it.
Milton Keynes Web Design For B2B Businesses
- Many Milton Keynes businesses already recognise that there's no such thing as a perfect website.
Going with the first result thrown up by searching for ‘the best Websites in Milton Keynes’ or finding a ‘website designer near me’ can only get you so far. It’s a challenge to find the right fit for you, your budget, and your expectations.
Websites from our agency or otherwise are likely not the solution your business needs. A new one isn’t going to set you on the road to success straight off the shelf, and if it does, it certainly won’t go hand in hand with using a 20% off voucher or a free consultation.
How we design your website with you
Instead, we will do our best to diagnose your problem as best we can and fulfil our obligation to deliver web design services in a way that a professional web design company should, with an outcome that objectively feels like value for money.
Websites are also a tool to help organisations progress, not a silver bullet that saves or kickstart a business. Wasting money on them hurts your organisation and our industry, so we’ve made it a point of policy not to do it. Instead for each job we follow a tried and tested process that you can learn more about here.
Makilo believe in supporting the creative and technology sector across Milton Keynes, failing that we can use AI with the best of them.
Professional Websites using the right Creative Agency in Milton Keynes
- Firstly, If you want to build a website affordably and efficiently, there are loads of fantastic DIY builders like Wix, Squarespace or Divi.
Plenty of WordPress themes and templates are available to purchase directly if you have the development or creative skills to handle them in-house.
DIY Web Design for MK Businesses
If you want to go it alone or feel worried about making a fixed budget stretch, check them out and see if there’s something more suitable than using a web design company or creative agency. They’re a useful gauge for the work/time involved in handling a digital project.
Should that work out, one of the services above could be all you need to ‘get up and running’ far quicker than slotting into a reputable agency’s project schedule, or risking it all on a business offering you know looks a bit too cheap and then waiting for the outcome with crossed fingers.
A more established design company
Try the demo and see if it suits your needs. A trial subscription and a few YouTube tutorials are often a better investment than spending your budget on taking a leap of faith on someone sitting in their kitchen using one on your behalf anyway.
While there’s a time and place for that kind of website, and it’s how most agencies start (including ours), having a service provider be open about what they’re doing and why is vital – if you’re comfortable and that kind of business arrangement is right for you, great. If not, now is the time to reach out to a more established web design company.
Makilo believe in supporting the creative and technology sector across Milton Keynes.
Makilo believe in supporting the creative and technology sector across Milton Keynes.
Makilo believe in supporting the creative and technology sector across Milton Keynes.
Agency Web Design vs Doing It Yourself
- Fundamentally, If you're coming to an agency for a website, graphic design, SEO, marketing or Website support, it should be for strategic reasons, not budgetary ones.
It shouldn’t be to get something you’re more than capable of doing efficiently and affordably elsewhere, ‘done’.
How you set up that professional engagement is an exciting opportunity; it’s a two-way street to establish a good fit for your project – a chance to present your ideas and a brief. (Need help working on your website project brief? Check this out) and evaluate how an agency like ours responds. An email and a quick call works wonders – agencies should be happy to take time out to chat with a prospective client. We invite people to our office for coffee and an initial scoping meeting.
There are no obligations, just advice or next steps, depending on your needs.
Is Makilo The Right Creative Agency For You?
- What Makilo looks for in a client in those meetings is the sentiment that almost every project is something to be worked on together and, importantly, a client sharing the view that, for them at least, there's a clear need for some external help/opinions and some desire for an agency's involvement to provide a fresh perspective.
Websites are such fundamental parts of an organisation that you need to collaborate with your chosen web design and development company, at least a little.
No one wants a big reveal; for us, involvement is always better than an awkward surprise.
Our Transparent Approach to Design Goals
Projects that start with complete transparency are where our ability to build what you need or want can then quickly reflect the broader influences on your business or its goals.
Doing that is a massive part of finding that collaborative sweet spot and where we’ve seen our most successful working relationships emerge. Being given the chance to openly understand and support the other organisations properly — using what we do best through design, development and available budgets to do something clients know is worthwhile by pinpointing a return on investment that can, in turn, lead to some competitive advantage.
A website’s appearance is often only part of the bigger commercial picture. It’s something we understand and advocate for whenever possible.
Although, saying that, a good photographer is a goldmine for almost every website project and business here’s why you should start looking for one asap.
Centre:MK shopping centre, Milton Keynes (1979, Derek Walker Associates with Stuart Mosscrop and Christopher Woodward). The glazed façade and gridded frame bring natural light and openness to the city’s main retail concourse.
Network Rail Head Office on Silbury Boulevard
Light Pyramid, Campbell Park, Milton Keynes (2000, artist: Liliane Lijn). This stainless steel landmark marks the park’s highest point and aligns with key axes of the city’s original masterplan.
How Makilo Is Different From Any Other Digital or Creative Agency in Milton Keynes?
- Not only are we named after Milton Keynes, but we understand what living and working in this city is all about, the nuances that make our home different from anywhere else in the UK.
We’re here to support Milton Keynes in representing itself, defining what it could be in the future, and helping it thrive.
We believe business owners and organisational leaders like you have a crucial role to play in that, and searching for ‘web designers near me’ should point you towards something at least a bit aspirational regarding what impact your new website and, by extension, your business or project might mean to the city as a whole.
Makilo was set up to represent what Milton Keynes stands for, and what it wants to be in the future. There’s no better way of showing that than through the city’s growing businesses.
Supporting Milton Keynes through design sponsorships
Company culture is and important part of every creative agency in Milton Keynes, we’ve all got a slightly different take:
Makilo’s Approach To Website Design
- If you're interested in making a change or starting something new, you're going to need an ally; we’d like that to be us.
However, here are a couple of additional things to think about when looking for or working with a Creative Agency or Web Design Agency in Milton Keynes, maybe a couple of red flags to be mindful of that could crop up:
- Approach
The Big Three
(01, 02, 03)
- [01]
Are they from MK? Do they live and work here?
- One of the most underrated parts of working with a design agency in Milton Keynes is how easy it is to meet up and talk through an aspect of your project together in person.
Remote working is excellent in many cases, but thrashing out a stylistic decision or approach to a problematic copy is much easier over a quick coffee.
Plus, it gives you an excuse to get out of the office for an hour. Just because an agency says it’s in/from Milton Keynes in the webpage copy does not mean it is – check the footers and contact pages for addresses and postcodes, look for geography-based landing pages that say the exact same stuff, but swap MK out for Coventry or Lincoln.
Volume agencies depend on stacking clients high and fast spam nearby locations all the time, whilst that’s as legitimate a business model as anything else. We’ve found that the last thing you, a prospective client, want is to be stuck on another Zoom call to Aberdeen when your site goes down on a Monday morning. Support Local when you can.
- [02]
Do they understand the City and this unique environment?
- Lots of agencies outsource work – nothing wrong with that, as long as they are transparent with clients about the management of and if necessary, contact with the extended team.
However, having staff working on MK based projects who consistently live and work elsewhere in the UK always feels like a missed opportunity. So much of what works elsewhere doesn’t gel with MK, and so much of MK feels strange to those from elsewhere.
It’s ok to ask for the location of the team working on your project – context is often much more important to successful design and development than you realise.
- [03]
How Does Milton Keynes Influence Their Design Decisions?
- MK isn't London or Birmingham, Manchester or Bristol - and as the idea of 'working with an agency' has spilt over into popular culture, so too has a generic sense of what an MK Design Agency should be.
How one operates doesn’t need to be a cookie-cutter version of what’s found in large cities with a different blend of industry and amenities than what we find here. It’s important to discuss with clients how they see their project fitting into, or standing apart from, the city’s overall direction of travel.
We’ve chosen to live, work, and operate in this region for a reason – we should be able to unpack that with each other constantly if we intend to stay and make Milton Keynes a ‘better’ place for ourselves, clients and communities to enjoy.
Notably, that’s on us – we should define what our city and its organisations look like for ourselves, not try to co-opt something that exists elsewhere. Self-determination is a powerful tool in building businesses, brands and even whole areas – ignore this to maintain the status
We specialise in supporting the strategic thinking that goes hand in hand with effective website design and development. Not just giving you a website and invoice as quickly as possible.
MK Gallery extension, Milton Keynes—corner view showing glass and ribbed metal cladding by 6a architects (2019).
Does Your MK Based Business Need A Website An App Or A Strategy?
- There's been no better time to be a Milton Keynes Business.
As the city approaches its sixtieth birthday in 2027, it’s continuing to grow, and whilst it’s thriving economically, more and more people, businesses, and organisations are looking to make a mark and capture that audience.
Whilst MK is going through some transformative years and discovering what the ‘city’ version of itself looks and feels like, it’s more important than ever to position your online activity in front of the right people whenever possible.
- A creative agency outside London
A considerable proportion of the effort and resources required to do that effectively is about striking the right balance between web design services and SEO services in Milton Keynes.
This is particularly important when you consider the reach the area now has and a hub between Oxford, Cambridge, London and Birmingham alongside the urban area extending up towards Northampton and down towards Luton.
That doesn’t mean we don’t work with clients further afield, our coverage area includes:
- Milton Keynes
- Buckinghamshire
- Leighton Buzzard
- Oxford
- Cambridge
- London
- Birmingham
- Northamptonshire
- Bedfordshire
- Luton
- Manchester
- Coventry
If that sounds like a good fit for you; or you’d like to know more about how we work, please feel free to get in touch with us.
- Recent Posts
Our interests
(2024 -2025)
