Websites for small businesses in Cowbridge.
I'm Huw. I build sites for small businesses and sole traders in Cowbridge. 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 20 minutes from Bridgend
- Also covering
- Cowbridge and the rest of Vale of Glamorgan, including Llanblethian, Aberthin, St Hilary, Ystradowen, Penllyn, Colwinston, Llysworney, Bonvilston.
Independents on the high street, farms behind
Cowbridge is unusual round here in that the high street is still full of independents. Shops, salons, galleries, places to eat, a lot of them run by one or two people who know their customers by name. People come in from Llanblethian, Aberthin, St Hilary, Ystradowen and further out, and at weekends from Cardiff and Bridgend as well, because coming to Cowbridge is the outing.
Behind the town is farming country and that’s a different business entirely. Farm shops, contractors, equestrian, fencing and groundwork. Customers scattered down single track lanes, and half of them find you because somebody told them to.
Both have the same gap. Well known locally, near enough invisible to anyone who hasn’t been told. Somebody moves into Colwinston and searches for a hairdresser, or somebody in Cardiff searches for a photographer in the Vale, and the shop with fifteen years of goodwill behind it doesn’t come up at all.
Small place names
People here search with place names and they use small ones. “Farm shop near Cowbridge”, “wedding photographer Vale of Glamorgan”, “gardener Llanblethian”. Map results first, websites underneath. Cowbridge also gets weekend visitors who decide where they’re going while they’re still in the car, and that decision happens on a phone in the map rather than on anybody’s website.
One thing worth saying plainly. A Cowbridge business selling to Cardiff customers is up against firms with more money to spend. You don’t win that with a bigger site, you win it by being specifically the thing they searched for, in the place they searched for it.
The site I’d make you
Something small, quick and legible. Plain HTML with the words in it, no page builder, nothing that has to load before a phone shows your address. I’ll sort the domain, the hosting and the email behind it, and keep it light enough to work on a lane with one bar.
If you sell things and you’re wondering about a shop on the site, I’ll be straight with you. Online selling drags payments, stock, postage and returns along with it, and for a lot of businesses here the answer is a good site plus the platform you already use, with the site pointing at it.
Twenty minutes over
I’ll come to you. An hour in the shop, or in the kitchen if you’re out at a farm, is worth a week of email. I can see what you’re selling, take proper photos, and find out which questions customers keep asking.
After that we mostly work by message with the odd call, and I’ll come back over when there’s something to sit and look at.
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 Cowbridge
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 Cowbridge.
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.