Web design

Who it is for

Bespoke web design makes most sense for Suffolk businesses that sell on expertise and trust rather than price alone. In practice that means a fairly wide group: precision engineers on the estates around Stowmarket and Ipswich, freight forwarders and hauliers working out of Felixstowe, solicitors and accountants in Bury St Edmunds and Woodbridge, specialist makers in the Stour Valley, and the creative and technology firms that have settled around the Ipswich Waterfront and Adastral Park at Martlesham.

What these businesses have in common is a careful buyer. Someone choosing a machining subcontractor, a customs agent or a family solicitor does not decide in ten seconds. They read, compare and look for reasons to rule suppliers out. A template site with a stock photo and a slogan gives them nothing to go on. A properly planned site answers their questions in the order they ask them.

It is less suitable if you need a simple online presence quickly and cheaply, or if you plan to change the whole site yourself every week. In those cases we will say so, and a good website builder may be the better first step.

What is included

Every web design project we take on includes the following as standard. None of it is an upsell.

Deliverable	What you get
Page plan	A document listing every page, its job, its main search phrase and its next step. Signed off before design starts.
Copy support	Interview-led drafts for key pages, or a careful edit of copy you supply.
Responsive design	Mobile layouts first, then tablet and desktop, shown with real copy.
Build	Lean, fast code with an editing setup that suits how often you update the site.
SEO setup	Titles, descriptions, headings, structured data, XML sitemap and Search Console.
Accessibility	Keyboard, screen reader and contrast checks against WCAG 2.2 AA.
Analytics	Privacy-respecting analytics with form submissions tracked as goals.
Launch	Redirects from old addresses, DNS changes, SSL and a post-launch check.
Training	A recorded walkthrough of how to edit your own site.

Step by step

1. Discovery. About an hour, on a video call or at your premises if you are within reach. We cover your customers, the questions they ask before buying, who you lose work to and why, and what the current site gets wrong. We also look at your enquiries: where they come from and what makes a good one.
2. Research. We look at how people in your area search for what you sell, which competitor pages rank, and where the gaps are. For a Felixstowe haulier that might be specific searches about container haulage or bonded storage; for a Woodbridge architect it might be listed building work and extensions.
3. Page plan and content outline. One page per job. You sign this off before we design anything, because it is the part that decides whether the site works.
4. Copy. We draft or edit the key pages. Short sentences, specific detail, no stock phrases.
5. Design. Layouts for mobile first, using the real copy. Most local searches happen on a phone, often in a van or a car park, so that is where the design starts.
6. Build and test. We build, then test on real phones and browsers, with a keyboard only, and with a screen reader. We check speed on a throttled mobile connection, which is a fair picture of rural Suffolk signal.
7. Launch. Old URLs are redirected, Search Console is verified and the sitemap is submitted.
8. Handover. A recorded training session, a short written guide, and all logins in your name.

How long it takes

A small brochure site of five to ten pages usually takes four to six weeks from discovery to launch. A larger site for a manufacturer or professional firm, with twenty or more capability and sector pages, is more often eight to twelve weeks. The biggest variable is not design or build time. It is how quickly content and feedback come back. We agree a timeline at the start with dates for each sign-off, and tell you straight away if something is slipping.

What drives the cost

We give a fixed quote after discovery, broken down by stage, so you can see where the money goes. The main things that move the price are:

• Number and depth of pages. A detailed capability page takes far more work than a contact page.
• Who writes the copy. Interview-led copywriting is often the largest single cost, and usually the most valuable.
• Features. Booking, quote calculators, file uploads, job listings, integrations with a CRM or stock system.
• Photography. Real photos of your premises and work make a big difference. We can plan a shot list and recommend local photographers.
• Migration. Moving years of existing content and protecting its search history takes time.

Our guide to what a website costs for a Suffolk small business goes into this in more detail, including the ongoing costs people forget.

Common mistakes we see

• Designing before planning. Picking a look first and fitting content in afterwards produces pretty pages that answer nothing.
• One page for every service. A single "Services" page listing everything ranks for nothing in particular.
• Stock photography. Buyers spot it instantly. Ten real photos beat a hundred stock ones.
• Heavy sliders and video headers. They slow the site and push the useful content down the page.
• A vague contact form. "Name, email, message" generates enquiries you cannot respond to without a phone call.
• No owner after launch. Sites decay when nobody is responsible for keeping them accurate.

How we measure it

We do not judge a website on how it looks in a portfolio. Before launch we agree a small number of measures that matter to your business, usually some of these:

• Enquiries and calls from the site, and how many of them were the right kind of work.
• Search impressions and clicks for the phrases in the page plan, from Search Console.
• Which pages people land on and where they leave.
• Core Web Vitals on mobile.

We check these at one month and three months after launch and send a short, plain report with anything we would change. Numbers are reported as they are; we do not promise rankings or percentages in advance.