More than a website.
Sometimes the site has to do something. Take a booking, take a deposit, sell the thing, keep track of who owes you what. I can spec that out and build it.
I'm in Bridgend, working across South Wales and remotely anywhere in the UK.
What I mean by custom
I don't mean a content management system, that's part of the usual web design job. I mean the site doing a job for you. A booking that takes a deposit at the time it's made. An online store when Shopify doesn't fit the way you sell. Something for managing jobs, customers or stock so it isn't living in a spreadsheet and your head. A portal your customers log into to see their own bookings, orders or paperwork.
I spec it first. That means working out what it has to do before anybody writes any code, so you get a written price and you know what you're getting for it. Then I build it, and it's yours at the end. Nothing monthly to me, no licence.
Salons, barbers and beauty
Plenty of salons already pay for a booking system, and it usually sits on a page that looks nothing like the rest of the site. If you've got one, I'll wire it into your site so people book without leaving the page they're on.
If you haven't got one, I'll help you pick one and set it up. Calendar bookings, reminders so people turn up, deposits so a no-show costs them rather than you. Contact forms that reach you as well, plenty of the ones I look at have been going nowhere quietly for months. There's more on how people find a salon on the hair and beauty page.
When you don't need any of this
Plenty of businesses don't. A static site and the booking tool you already pay for is a fine answer, and it costs you nothing on top. If that's what I think you should do, that's what I'll tell you.
The rough line is this. If the thing you want is already handled by software you've got, wire it in and stop there. If you're doing it by hand every day, or paying monthly for something that does a third of the job, that's when building something starts to pay for itself.
Questions people ask first
Do I need a custom system?
Probably not. Most small businesses are fine with what they've already got. Tell me what you end up doing by hand every week and I'll tell you whether it's worth building something. If the answer is no, you've lost twenty minutes.
What does it cost?
Depends on the spec, and you'll have a written price before I start. I won't put a number on a page like this because the same idea can be a week or a couple of months depending on what it has to do.
Who owns it?
You do. The code, the data and the accounts it runs on are all in your name. Hand it to somebody else in two years and they can pick it up without asking me for anything.
Tell me what it has to do.
A rough description is enough. Say what happens now and what you'd rather happen instead, and I'll tell you whether it needs building or whether something off the shelf already does it. I aim to reply within a working day.