Websites for small businesses in Cardiff.
I'm Huw. I build sites for small businesses and sole traders in Cardiff. I can help acquire and setup your domain, the hosting and your custom email.
It's just me, so you deal with the same person the whole way through.
For most sites I build, there's no ongoing monthly cost once it's live, that includes no hosting cost. You'll see some other agencies charge a monthly ongoing fee to keep your site live, with me, you only pay when you actually need something.
- Where I live
- About 30 minutes from Bridgend
- Also covering
- Cardiff and the surrounding area, including Canton, Pontcanna, Roath, Cathays, Grangetown, Whitchurch, Llandaff, Rhiwbina, Cyncoed, Splott.
In a city, being general is what kills you
Everything I’d tell a business in Bridgend about local search still applies in Cardiff. What changes is who else is in the results. For any broad term a one person business is up against agencies with budgets, national chains with hundreds of location pages, and lead generation sites that exist to sell your enquiry on to three other people. Nobody’s winning “hairdresser Cardiff” by building a nicer website.
Being narrower works. A physio for runners in Pontcanna, a photographer who does small weddings in the Vale and the city, an accountant who only takes on subcontractors in the building trade. The searches that bring you customers are the specific ones and they’re far less contested.
The other Cardiff thing is districts. Canton, Roath, Cathays, Whitchurch, Llandaff and Grangetown behave like separate towns as far as the search box is concerned. Someone in Rhiwbina looking for a dog groomer types Rhiwbina, and never the city.
The map listing matters as much here as anywhere and it’s harder, because proximity counts. You show up strongly near where you are and fade further out, which is another reason to be specific about your patch instead of claiming the whole city.
What I’d build, and when you shouldn’t hire me
A small static site, plain HTML, quick on a phone. No page builder, no cookie banner between someone and your booking link. Where the enquiry is the product, a physio or a trainer, the phone number and the form stay in front of people.
I should be straight about one thing. If you want a team of ten, a brand strategy, ongoing paid ads and a campaign, there are agencies in Cardiff that do all that and I’m not one of them. What I do is one person building something small, fast and maintainable, and telling you honestly when a thing you’ve been sold isn’t worth having.
Half an hour down the M4
I’ll come in for the first conversation if that’s useful, and for anything worth looking at together. For most Cardiff jobs a video call is quicker for both of us and I’m happy to work that way from the start.
Nothing gets handed to an account manager along the way and nothing gets subcontracted to somebody you’ll never speak to.
Hosting and email
For most sites I build there's no ongoing hosting cost and no monthly retainer. The domain renews once a year at list price, no commission from me, and it's registered in your name so you can take it elsewhere whenever you want.
Email goes on your own custom domain, setup properly so what you send lands in the inbox rather than the spam folder.
What I'd build for a business in Cardiff
These read differently depending on the trade, so there's a page for each with the searches your customers make and what the site has to do about them.
See where your site stands first
Put your address into the free check and it tells you where the site's hosted, what it's built with, what a search engine actually gets and whether your email is setup right. Takes about ten seconds, nothing is installed and nothing on your site is touched. Run the free check.
If you'd rather read about how I build first, here's the web design page, and here are five things to ask anyone quoting you. You can also see everywhere else I work.
Tell me what you need in Cardiff.
Say what you're trying to achieve and I'll tell you what I'd do, including when the answer is you don't need a new site at all.