Cornerstone Sites

Websites

Everything your website needs, handled.

Professional websites for small UK businesses. We design it, build it, host it and look after it, so there's no website builder to learn and no hosting to manage. You tell us about your business, we do the rest.

Websites from £495.

Get started See packages and prices

Who it's for

Small UK businesses that need a proper website.

We work with sole traders and small teams, roughly one to ten people, who'd rather be doing the job than building a website. Being clear about who we're for also means being clear about who we're not for.

A good fit

  • Local trades: plumbers, electricians, builders, decorators, landscapers and cleaners
  • Independent professionals: therapists, counsellors, tutors and driving instructors
  • Small practices and consultancies: consultants, accountants and other professional services
  • Anyone with a business that runs on enquiries, phone calls and word of mouth
  • Anyone who wants a website they own, without learning any software to keep it running

Not what we do

Some businesses need more than a website, and they're better served elsewhere. We'll say so early rather than take the work and do it badly.

  • Online shops and ecommerce
  • Custom applications and software
  • Membership systems and customer portals
  • Complex booking platforms

If that's you, tell us anyway. We'll point you at someone who does that work properly.

What's included

The same technical groundwork in every website.

Packages differ in size and scope. The setup underneath doesn't. Every website we build gets all of this, whichever package you choose. See packages and prices

In every website

  • Website design and build
  • Optimised for mobiles and tablets
  • Contact form, wired up to your email
  • SSL certificate, so the site is secure
  • Basic security configuration
  • Analytics set up
  • Google Search Console set up
  • Page titles and metadata written for you
  • Appropriate structured data, so Google understands what you do
  • Basic accessibility considerations
  • Two rounds of reasonable revisions before launch
  • Launch and DNS configuration
  • First 12 months of managed hosting
  • Technical support for launch-related issues for 30 days after launch

Not included unless we've said so

We'd rather you knew up front. Some of these we can quote for separately, some we don't do at all.

  • Ecommerce
  • Complex booking systems
  • Membership or customer portals
  • Custom applications
  • Ongoing content changes
  • Ongoing SEO campaigns
  • Ongoing Google Business Profile management
  • Paid advertising
  • Copywriting from a blank page
  • Photography
  • Branding and logo design
  • Migrating your existing email
  • Ongoing Google Workspace administration

How it works

Four steps, and we do most of them.

From the first message to a live website, here's what actually happens and what we need from you.

  1. Tell us about your business

    You fill in a short questionnaire about what you do, who you do it for and the areas you cover. If it helps, we'll have a brief call. That's the main thing we need from you, and it usually takes under an hour.

  2. We build it

    We work out the structure, design the pages and put the initial content together from what you've told us. You don't need to supply a design, a template or a brief.

  3. You review it

    You get a private preview link and send us your changes in plain English. Two reasonable rounds of revisions are included, so there's room to get the wording and the details right.

  4. We launch it

    We configure the domain, the Google services, analytics and hosting, then put the site live. After launch we're on hand for 30 days for anything launch-related.

Most customers never touch any website software at any point.

Search

Built properly for Google from day one.

We take care of the technical foundations that search engines look at, rather than bolting them on later. For local businesses, we can also configure and optimise your Google Business Profile, which is what shows up in the map results when someone nearby searches for what you do.

Search Console

Set up and verified, so Google can find and index your site and you can see how it's doing.

Titles and descriptions

Every page gets a written title and description, rather than whatever a template happened to generate.

Structured data

Appropriate markup so search engines understand what your business is, where it is and what it offers.

Speed and mobile

Fast pages that work properly on a phone, which is where most people will find you.

How it's built

Simple technology, fewer things to go wrong.

Our sites are deliberately lightweight. They don't rely on dozens of WordPress plugins or a heavy website builder, and that has real consequences for you rather than just for us.

Fast

Pages load quickly on a phone on a patchy signal, which is how a lot of people will first see you.

Secure

Fewer moving parts means a much smaller surface for things to be broken into or broken by an update.

Reliable

Nothing to patch every month, nothing to quietly stop working while you're out on a job.

Easy to move

Cheap to host and straightforward to hand over, so you're never stuck with us to keep the site online.

For anyone who wants the detail: we build static sites and host them on Cloudflare. There's no database and no content management system running in the background, which is exactly why there's so little to go wrong.

Optional add-on

Email that matches your website.

If you're still using a personal address for work, we can set you up with Google Workspace business email on your own domain. Professional addresses like [email protected], configured and working on your phone and laptop before we hand it over.

No lock-in

Your website. Not ours.

Your business should never be trapped with its web designer.

  • Your domain is registered in your name.
  • Your content belongs to you.
  • Your website belongs to you.
  • If you ever decide to leave, we'll provide the website files needed to host it elsewhere and help make the handover straightforward.
  • No proprietary website builder. No artificial lock-in.

That's how it should be.

Next step

Ready to get your business online?

Tell us a little about your business and we'll recommend the simplest option that fits what you need.

Get started