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Web Design / Hitchin

Web design for Hitchin businesses that trade on being independent

Hitchin still trades like a market town. Independent shops, studios and family firms that people travel in for, and whose whole appeal is being nothing like a chain. A template website flattens exactly that.

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10+ years building for independent, owner-run businesses Custom WordPress, built around one shop rather than a thousand Serving Hitchin, Letchworth and the north Hertfordshire towns
Why Hitchin businesses call me

Web design that keeps the character the high street is built on

The reason people choose a Hitchin independent over the retail park is that it feels like someone specific is behind it. Most websites quietly delete that.

Sites that sound like the people who run them

Design and words drawn from how you actually talk to customers in the shop, not lifted from a template's placeholder copy and lightly edited.

Built for a town people visit on purpose

Opening hours, events, seasonal ranges and what is on this week, all easy for you to change yourself, because a stale site costs you the visit.

Booking and ordering built in properly, not bolted on

Tables, tickets, click-and-collect or membership written as real WordPress plugins, instead of a page builder bent until it almost works.

The person who builds it is the person who answers

No handover to a support desk at launch. The number you call in two years reaches whoever wrote the thing you are calling about.

People come to Hitchin because it is not a retail park. The website should not read like one.
What changes

The Hitchin website most independents end up with vs. the one that sells what makes them independent

The common approach

  • A theme that makes a one-off shop look like every other one-off shop
  • Opening hours and events that went stale eighteen months ago
  • Stock imagery standing in for a place people travel in to see
  • Nobody to call when something breaks in the middle of a Saturday

How I do it

  • A design built around your actual premises, stock and personality
  • Hours, events and seasonal changes you can update in a minute from your phone
  • Real photography of the real place, because that is the whole pitch
  • One person who answers, and who already knows how the site was built
Questions people actually ask

FAQ

Why use a website designer in Hitchin rather than a bigger agency?

Agencies put a layer between you and whoever does the work. Here there is no layer, which shows up most two years after launch when you need one thing changed quickly and cheaply.

I run a shop, not a tech business. Will I be able to update it myself?

Yes, and that is designed in from the start. The parts you change often, hours, events, products, photos, are built to be obvious and hard to break. If you would rather not touch it, I can look after it instead.

Do you work with hospitality as well as retail?

Yes. Cafes, restaurants and venues have the same problem from the other direction: bookings, menus and events change constantly, and most websites make that harder than it needs to be.

My current site is not terrible. Is a rebuild really worth it?

Often not. Sometimes the honest answer is faster hosting, better photography and rewriting the three pages people actually land on. If a rebuild genuinely is the right call I will show you why rather than just saying so.

Proof

Sites I built that are running right now

Open any of them. These are live businesses trading on the site, not mockups, and each one has a write-up of what was built and why.

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Also serving
Hertfordshire Watford St Albans Welwyn Hemel Hempstead Stevenage Hatfield Harpenden Bishop's Stortford Letchworth Barnet Finchley Harrow Wembley North London London Hertford Luton Dunstable Berkhamsted Potters Bar Royston Baldock Bedfordshire Buckinghamshire Essex Milton Keynes Colchester Cambridge Oxford Northampton Peterborough Birmingham Bristol Manchester Southampton Norwich Brighton Reading Bedford Leicester Nottingham Leeds Coventry Sheffield Cardiff Liverpool Newcastle Exeter Portsmouth Plymouth Swansea Bournemouth Derby Hull York Cheltenham Wolverhampton Lincoln Gloucester Ipswich Swindon Bath Preston Stoke-on-Trent Sunderland
What clients say
Terry has been working with us for nearly 10 years now. We asked Terry to help us with our website...turned out so amazing.
Swagat Catering
We have been working with BMDC, formally known as Krazy Media, for our branding and advertising for a number of years. The company has provided us a bespoke professional service tailored to our company needs.
First Lady London
Available for projects

Tell me what's broken, or what you're starting.

One email or a fifteen-minute call. I read and reply to every one myself.

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