Web design for shops and independent retailers, from £395

Most independent shops we look at have the same setup: a Google listing that somebody claimed years ago, a Facebook page with a post from last Christmas, and no website at all. It works, in the sense that regulars still come in. What it does not do is win anybody new, because a person deciding where to spend forty quid on a Saturday does about ninety seconds of research first, and there is nothing there for them to find.

The thing that changes is not the number of people searching. It is how many of them end up at your door rather than at the shop two streets over that looks like it is doing well. That is a presentation problem and it is fixable in a week.

A person looking for a shop types the thing plus the town, or they type it and let the phone supply the town. Bike shop Eastleigh. Butchers near me. Record shop Southampton. Those searches put the map first, which is why your Google Business Profile matters as much as the site does, and why we set it up properly as part of a build rather than leaving it to you.

Underneath the map are the ordinary results, and that is where a site with real pages about real departments beats a single page that says welcome to our shop. A page about the thing you are known for will be found by people searching for that thing, and there is usually one per shop that nobody else in town does properly.

Reviews feed both. We build the ask into the site and into the after-sale, and we never invent a rating or print a star average we cannot evidence.

Online selling suits you if you have stock with decent margin that posts easily, or if people already ring up asking whether you can send one. It does not suit you if your margin is thin, your stock is heavy or perishable, or your day is already full. An online shop that takes four orders a month and eats your evenings is a worse business than no online shop at all, and we would rather say that now than sell you one.

Where it genuinely works, we build it: a real catalogue, real payments, click and collect if that suits you better than posting. That sits at the £1,200 end of our pricing and we would talk it through properly first. See our page on online shops for what that build actually involves.

We do not currently have an ecommerce client live, so we are selling that on what we can build rather than on somebody else's numbers. That is the honest position and you should hold us to it.

Tell us about the shop and within 48 hours you get a link to a real site built for it, not a template with your name dropped in. If it is not right, say so and there is no cost and no chase. No card and no sales call.

Builds are £395, £650 or £1,200 depending on depth, and a build can be split into three payments, same price, no interest and no fees, within twelve months. You own the site.

Care plans are £45, £85 or £150 a month with no minimum term, and for a shop the useful part is usually somebody keeping hours, stock strips and seasonal changes current so the site does not go stale by March.