The SH Studios Blog
Honest, practical guides on web design, SEO and growth, written by the developers who actually build the sites.
What UK small businesses actually pay for web design, what genuinely moves the price, and the quotes that should make you walk away.
The pages, proof and contact details a trade site needs before it is worth paying for, and the ones every agency adds that nobody reads.
Where the builders are genuinely fine, where they quietly cost you work, and how to tell which side of that line your business sits on.
What you own at the end of each arrangement, what happens when you leave, and the questions worth asking before you sign anything.
Most small businesses do not need a checkout. Here is the point at which taking card payments online stops being a want and starts paying for itself.
The difference between a website and a tool that does a job, with the admin tasks that are worth building software for and the ones that are not.
Why a build stalls, what we actually need from you, and an honest week-by-week picture of a site going from nothing to live.
The three separate things people mean by the top of Google, which one you can move fastest, and how long each realistically takes.
The usual causes, in the order they are worth checking, from an unverified profile to a service area set wider than you can work.
When to ask, what to send, and why the reply you leave underneath matters more than the star count you are chasing.
What a Facebook page does well, what it cannot do at all, and the specific jobs a site picks up that a social profile never will.
What each one costs, how quickly each starts working, and the situations where paying for clicks is the sensible answer.