Websites for shops, restaurants and local businesses
Almost everybody arriving at a local business's website wants one of four things: are you open, where are you, what do you have, and what is the number. A site that answers those four in the first screen has done nearly its whole job.
What this kind of site actually needs
- Opening hours, correct, including the holiday you close for. Wrong hours are the single most expensive mistake a local site can make — somebody drove there.
- A map and directions that open in the map app already on their phone.
- What you actually sell: the menu, the treatment list, the range. Not a description of it — the thing itself.
- Photographs of the real room. People are deciding whether they would feel comfortable walking in.
- The phone number, tappable, and whether you take bookings or walk-ins.
- Your Google Business Profile set up and matching the site, because for this kind of business that listing gets more visits than the site does.
Hours change, and that is the real work
Every local site is accurate the week it launches. The ones that stay accurate are the ones where changing the hours takes a message rather than a login, a password reset and twenty minutes of nerve.
That is what the care plan is for here more than anywhere else: you send a message, the hours change the same working day, and nobody drives across town on a Monday you are shut.
What we will ask you for
Your hours, your address and whether we may publish it, what you sell, photos of the place, and your existing Google listing if you have one. If you are not sure whether your listing is claimed, we will check.
Questions we get asked
- I only really need people to find my hours and address.
- Then that is what the site should be built around, and it will be a small one. That is a good outcome, not a lesser one — most of what makes a local site fail is everything that was added on top of those two facts.
- Can I sell online?
- You can take payments through your own Stripe account for specific things — a deposit, a gift card, a class. A full shop with stock and shipping is a different kind of build; tell us and we will be straight about whether it is a fit.
- Do I need this if I have a Facebook page?
- They do different jobs. A Facebook page is where people who already follow you see what is new; a website is what a stranger finds when they search your town and your trade. Most local businesses want both, and the site is the one you own.
Send us your hours, your address and some photos of the place. That is most of it.