Websites built for your trade

Most drivers pick a garage the same way: they search, they look at the reviews, and they call whoever looks trustworthy. If your shop has no website, that call goes somewhere else.

A salon is chosen on how the work looks and how easy it is to get a chair. Your website needs to do both, on a phone, in about ten seconds.

Cleaning is sold on trust and on price-per-job, and neither survives a website that looks like it was built in 2011 — or no website at all.

A homeowner about to spend five figures on their house will look you up first. What they find decides whether you get the call — and "no website" reads as "no track record".

Nobody can picture what you do from a phone number on a flyer. They can picture it instantly from a photograph of an overgrown yard beside the same yard a day later.

Junk removal is bought in a hurry, usually by someone standing in front of a pile they have been ignoring for a year. The business that answers first, with a number, gets the job.

Two questions decide whether someone eats with you tonight: what have you got, and are you open. A website that answers both quickly is most of the job.

A small shop competes with the internet on the two things the internet is bad at: being nearby, and being trusted. A website is how someone finds out you are both.

People join a studio they have already pictured themselves in. Your website is where that happens — the room, the classes, the people who got results.

A patient choosing a clinic is looking for competence and clarity. A slow, confusing site undoes both before they have read a word.

Flowers are bought with the eyes and almost always in a hurry. Your website needs to show the work beautifully and take the order request in the same minute.

People are careful about who they hand their dog to. Photographs of happy, well-groomed animals and reviews from other owners do more to settle that than any amount of copy.

A corner store lives on two numbers: what is on the shelf, and what it sold for. Most shops track the first in their head and the second on a paper pad, and neither survives a busy Saturday.

A hardware shop carries thousands of lines, most of them small, cheap, and easy to run out of at the worst possible moment. Knowing what is actually on the shelf is the whole job.

A phone shop is two businesses wearing one sign: repairs, which are quoted, and accessories, which are stocked. Most website tools are built for one or the other.

More people look up a pharmacy at eight in the evening than at any other hour, and they are checking one thing: are you open. Everything else on the page is a bonus.