Taxi website design is mostly about the jobs that do not come through the app. Local street work gets booked by phone or by whichever app your firm sits on, so the website earns its keep elsewhere: airport transfers booked days ahead, business account customers, school and care contracts, and anyone checking you are a properly licensed operator before they hand over a child or an elderly relative. Build for those four and keep the rest simple.
What is a taxi firm website actually for?
If you took your website down tomorrow, your regulars would still ring the same number. That is true, and it is why so many firms leave theirs untouched for years. The work you would lose is the work that starts with someone searching rather than someone already knowing you.
That is a specific type of customer. They are planning ahead, not standing in the rain. They are comparing two or three firms, often on price for a fixed route. They may be spending someone else's money and will need an invoice. And they are doing the check that nobody does for a street hail: who is this firm, are they licensed, will the car turn up at 4am.
Your site is the thing that answers that at half past nine at night when nobody is going to pick up the office phone. It does not need to be clever. It needs to be clear, fast and obviously real.
The pages that earn their keep
A taxi firm does not need twenty pages. It needs about eight that each do a job.
Airport transfers
This is usually the most valuable page on a taxi website. People book airport runs in advance, they search for them by name, and they care about things that do not matter on a town job: meet and greet, flight tracking, waiting time if the plane is late, luggage capacity, child seats.
Give each airport you cover its own section or page. Heathrow, Manchester, East Midlands, Stansted, whichever you actually run to. Put the indicative fare or the fare basis on the page if you are comfortable doing so, say how long the journey takes from your town, and say what happens if the flight lands two hours late. A price with conditions attached beats no price, because the alternative is the customer ringing three firms and picking whoever answers first.
Business accounts
Account work is steady, it is invoiced monthly, and it is almost always found rather than hailed. An office manager searching for a firm that will invoice is a different reader from a Saturday night passenger. Give them their own page and tell them how it works: how accounts are set up, whether drivers can collect without the passenger paying, how invoices and cost centre references are handled, who to email.
School, council and care contracts
If you do home to school transport, hospital runs or care journeys, say so plainly and say what you hold. Contract work tends to be awarded on paperwork and the website is where a procurement officer does the first sift. Vehicle types, wheelchair accessible vehicles, driver checks, your operator licence and the council that issued it.
Areas covered
Villages and outlying areas search by name. A page or a clear section listing the places you serve, with a map, is worth more than a paragraph saying "and surrounding areas". Every RentAWeb package includes a service area map, which handles this without extra work.
Fleet
Six seaters, eight seaters, executive cars, wheelchair accessible vehicles. People booking a hen do, a golf trip or an airport run for a family of five need to know you have the right vehicle before they ring. Photos of your actual cars are worth more here than stock images.
Licensing proof: the bit most taxi websites skip
Private hire is licensed, and the difference between a licensed operator and someone with a car and a Facebook page matters enormously to the people booking the journeys that pay best. Make it easy to see.
- Your private hire operator licence number and the licensing authority that issued it
- Whether drivers hold enhanced DBS checks
- Public liability and hire and reward insurance, in plain words rather than certificate scans
- Whether your vehicles are plated by the same council as the area you mainly work in
- Accessibility: which vehicles take a wheelchair, and whether the ramp is fitted or portable
- The trading name, the limited company name if different, and a landline or office address
None of that is exciting to write. It is the exact information a school business manager, a care home or a nervous parent is looking for, and most competing sites do not have it. Being the firm that answers the question is a reasonable way to stand out when every site in town has the same photo of a yellow taxi sign.
What a taxi website does not need
Plenty of money gets spent on features that do nothing for a private hire firm. Be sceptical of these.
- A second booking system. If your dispatch software already has a customer booking widget or an app, do not pay someone to build a different one that emails the office. Two systems means two places to check and one of them will get missed.
- Live vehicle tracking on the public site. Impressive in a demo, rarely used, expensive to keep working.
- A full fare calculator for every postcode. If your fares are metered, you cannot quote them honestly in advance anyway. Fixed airport prices on a page do the same job for a fraction of the cost.
- A news blog nobody reads. Useful if you will actually write about local events, roadworks, airport parking changes. Pointless if it sits empty from 2019.
- Big video headers. They slow the page down, and a slow website costs you work when half your visitors are on mobile data in a hurry.
Should a taxi firm have online booking on the website?
It depends entirely on what you already run. If you are on a dispatch platform with its own passenger app and web booking, link to it and stop there. Duplicating it adds confusion.
If you take bookings by phone and a note in a diary, an online booking form is worth considering, mainly for advance work. The pattern that tends to suit small firms is a simple request form: pickup, destination, date, time, passengers, luggage, flight number if relevant, phone number. You confirm it yourself. It is not instant, but it captures the 11pm airport enquiry you would otherwise never hear about.
At RentAWeb, online bookings are included on the Business package and are a £20 a month option on the other tiers, and a price calculator is £25 a month, both excluding VAT. For most taxi firms the calculator is the wrong buy unless you genuinely work to published fixed prices on set routes.
Design for a thumb, in the dark, in a hurry
Most people who open a taxi website are on a phone, often outdoors, often at night, and often while already slightly annoyed. Three things matter more than anything a designer will show you in a mock-up.
- The phone number is always visible. A floating call bar that sticks to the bottom of the screen is included on every RentAWeb site. One tap, call placed.
- The page loads fast on a weak signal. Compressed images, no heavy sliders.
- The key facts are above the fold. Areas covered, airport runs, whether you are 24 hours. Nobody scrolls three screens to find out if you work on a Sunday.
Reviews help too, and not just the star rating. A handful of short real comments about drivers turning up early for a 4am flight does more than a page of adjectives. If you are writing the pages yourself, writing the words for your own website goes through how to do it without it sounding like everyone else.
What should taxi website design cost?
A taxi firm site is not a complicated build. You are looking at eight to twelve pages: home, airport transfers (sometimes split by airport), accounts, contracts, fleet, areas covered, about, contact, and maybe a page on wheelchair accessible travel.
At RentAWeb that lands on the Essential package, up to 10 pages at £79 a month, or Professional at up to 15 pages for £99 a month if you want a page per airport. Both exclude VAT. Extra pages are £10 a month each, or five for £40 a month. Hosting, SSL, business email, a free .co.uk domain, the service area map, the gallery, reviews, the FAQ section and the floating call bar are in the price, along with a free redesign every year.
You pay the first three months up front to start, then monthly from month four. There is no setup fee and no contract, so you can cancel any month with a month's notice. AI copywriting and AI images are included free, or you supply your own words and photos, or mix the two. Your own photos of your own cars are almost always better.
If you would rather own it outright, that is a separate one off price list rather than a multiple of the rent: £1,788 for a 10 page Essential site, £2,388 for a 15 page Professional, both excluding VAT, with hosting, support and the Nova editor at £250 a year or £30 a month afterwards. The comparison between the two is covered in should you own your website or rent it?, and you can price up your website either way in a couple of minutes.
Being found by the people searching
Taxi searches are local and specific. "Taxi to Manchester airport from Macclesfield" is a different search from "taxi near me", and the page that answers it directly tends to do better than a home page that mentions airports in passing.
Your Google Business Profile does a lot of the heavy lifting for the near me searches, and your website supports it rather than replaces it. Consistent name, address and phone number, your areas named in the text, and pages for the routes you actually want. Getting found on Google when you only work locally covers the practical side of that without the jargon.
Frequently asked questions
Do I still need a website if my firm is on a booking app?
You do not need one for app work, but the app will not help you win account customers, school contracts or advance airport bookings from people searching by name. Those enquirers want to see a licensed firm with a landline and a real address. If none of that work interests you, a website matters less.
Should I put my fares on the website?
Fixed route prices, like airport runs, are worth publishing with clear conditions attached. Metered local fares usually are not, because you cannot quote them honestly in advance. Saying "fixed prices to all major airports, call or email for a quote" is better than silence and safer than a figure you cannot hold.
Can one website cover both taxi work and minibus hire?
Yes, and it usually should, provided each gets its own page rather than a shared paragraph. Minibus and executive hire customers search different terms and ask different questions about seats, luggage and driver hours. Two clear pages on one site is simpler and cheaper than two separate websites.
How quickly can changes be made to the site?
With a RentAWeb site you edit text, prices and photos yourself in the Nova editor, or send them to us and we do it. Content changes are unlimited and free, which matters when airport fares or your out of hours arrangements change. One design revision is included in the build.
The short version
A taxi firm website is not there to replace your phone or your app. It is there for airport transfers, account customers, contract work and anyone checking you are properly licensed before they book. Build those pages well, make the number tappable, keep it fast, and skip the gadgets.
RentAWeb builds and hosts small business websites in the UK for a monthly fee, with no contract and no setup fee, all handled by phone, email and video. If you want to see what a taxi firm site would cost, you can see what yours would cost, read how pay monthly websites work, or have a look at who you would be dealing with.
