Web Design
Straightforward websites for independent businesses across Swansea, Wales and the UK. Built properly, owned entirely by you, and handled directly by the person building it.
Who This Is For
Trades, shops, cafes, salons, consultants and the sort of independent business where the owner answers the phone. You do not need a marketing department, you need a site that tells people what you do, makes it easy to get hold of you, and then stays out of your way.
You will deal with the person who builds it. There is no account manager in between, no ticket queue, and nobody relaying your comments to somebody else. If you have a question, you ask the person who wrote the code.
We are a technology consultancy and this is the smallest thing we do, which is precisely why it is worth having built properly. The same standards that go into business systems go into a five page site for a plumber.
What You Get
These are not extras or upgrades. They are what a working website needs in order to earn its keep, so they are in every build as standard.
Most people will find you on a phone, often standing outside deciding whether to come in or call. Every site we build is laid out for a small screen first and then adapted upwards, rather than the other way round.
In practice: A cafe checking their new site on a Friday night sees the phone number, the opening hours and the address without a single pinch or scroll.
Page titles, descriptions, a sitemap and the structured data search engines look for, all set up properly at build time. We will also walk you through your Google Business Profile, which is what actually puts you on the map.
In practice: Someone searching for a plumber in Gorseinon at nine on a Sunday evening finds your number rather than a directory site selling your enquiry to three competitors.
A contact form that lands in your inbox, protected against spam so you are not wading through junk to find the real ones. Click to call and click for directions on mobile, because that is what people actually press.
In practice: A customer fills in the form on Sunday, the enquiry is in your email before Monday, and nothing has gone missing in a contact page nobody monitors.
Sites are built as static pages served from a content network, which means they load quickly and there is no database or plugin stack sitting there waiting to be exploited. HTTPS is set up from day one.
In practice: No monthly plugin updates, no security patches to keep on top of, and nothing that quietly breaks six months after you stop paying attention to it.
How It Works
You know what is happening at every stage, what it costs, and what happens next. Nothing is a surprise, least of all the invoice.
We talk about what the site needs to do and who it is for. You then get it in writing: a list of exactly what is included, a list of what is not, and a fixed price. Nothing starts until you have read that and said you are happy with it.
We build the homepage and send you a link. This is the stage to tell us the colours are wrong or the layout is not working, because changes cost minutes here and days once the rest is built. Time for changes at this stage is included.
Once you have approved the design, the remaining pages get built to match it. No surprises at the end, because you have already seen and signed off what it is going to look like.
The site goes live on your own domain and your own hosting account, both of which are in your name. We walk you through what has been set up and where everything lives, so you are not dependent on us to understand your own website.
A block of time for amendments is included after go-live, so the small things you spot in the first fortnight get fixed as a matter of course. Beyond that, changes are quoted before any work starts, so you are never billed for something you did not agree to.
How We Work
Most of the horror stories people tell about websites come down to the same handful of problems. These are the commitments that prevent them.
No Lock In
This is the part worth reading twice, because it is where small businesses most often come unstuck. Your domain is registered in your name. Your hosting account is yours, on your card. Every third party account the site uses belongs to you. We are added as a collaborator so the work can be done, and that is the extent of it.
It means that if you ever decide to go elsewhere, you remove our access and everything stays exactly where it is. There is nothing to transfer, nothing to reclaim, no hosting invoice hanging over you and no awkward conversation about who owns what. Whoever you bring in next can start work the same afternoon.
Plenty of small websites are quietly held hostage by whoever set them up, sometimes without the owner realising until they try to leave. We would rather you stayed because you want to.
Questions
It depends on how many pages there are and what the site needs to do, so the honest answer is that we will not know until we have talked about it. What you can count on is that you get a fixed price in writing before anything starts, and it does not change unless you ask for something new. There is no hourly meter running and no invoice at the end that you were not expecting.
A straightforward small business site is typically a few weeks of working time. The part that varies most is not the building, it is how quickly the text and photographs arrive and how quickly the design gets approved. Sites where the owner has their content ready go live considerably faster than sites where it is still being written.
Yes, the text and the photographs come from you. You know your business and your customers far better than we do, and copy written by someone who does not know the trade reads like it. We will tell you what is needed for each page and give you a hand shaping it, but the words should be yours.
That is exactly why the homepage is designed and approved before anything else gets built. You see the colours, fonts and layout on a real page, and there is time included at that stage to change them. Once you are happy, the rest of the site is built to match, so there is no unpleasant surprise at the end.
You do, in every case. The domain is registered in your name and the hosting account is yours, on your card, with us added as a collaborator so we can do the work. It is a deliberate choice. Plenty of small websites are held hostage by whoever set them up, and that cannot happen here.
You would need to find another developer, and that is a phone call rather than a crisis. Everything is already in your name, the site is built with standard tools rather than anything proprietary, and you are given a copy of the files along with a note of where the domain and hosting live. Most people in your position get caught out because the developer owned everything. That is the situation this arrangement is designed to avoid.
Yes, and they are worth talking about at the very start rather than after the site is finished. Each one is a separate piece of work with its own cost, so if any of them matter to you, say so during the first conversation and they go into the quote. Adding them later is always more expensive than building them in from the beginning.
The domain renews annually and hosting for a site of this kind is usually free or close to it, both paid by you directly to the providers rather than through us. There is no compulsory monthly fee to keep the site online. If you want changes made from time to time, those are quoted individually, or you can buy a block of hours in advance if you expect to use them regularly.
Get Started
Tell us what your business does and what you want the site to achieve. You will get a straight answer on whether we are the right fit, what it would involve, and a fixed price in writing before anything begins.
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