Notes
What actually loses businesses customers online, and what each leak costs.
Why your website is slow on a phone, and what it is costing you
Your site loads fine on your laptop and takes eleven seconds on a customer's phone. Here is where those seconds actually go, and which ones are worth buying back.
Your menu is a photograph, and Google cannot read a word of it
A menu saved as a JPEG or PDF is invisible to search, unreadable on a phone, and impossible for a screen reader. Here is what it costs and how to fix it in an afternoon.
Your contact form works. The notifications stopped six months ago.
The form submits, the thank-you page appears, and nothing arrives. It is the most expensive silent failure on a small business website. Here is how to test yours in five minutes.
How much should a website cost, and why the quotes vary so wildly
The same brief comes back at £500 and at £25,000. Both are real prices for genuinely different things. Here is what actually drives the number, so you can read a quote properly.
Do I need a website if I already have Instagram?
Social accounts do things a website cannot, and a website does things no social account can. The question is which risks you can live with. An honest answer, including when the answer is no.
What the delivery apps actually cost you, per order
The commission is the visible part. The customer relationship, the data, and the pricing pressure are the rest. Working out whether direct ordering is worth building.
The four numbers worth watching, and everything you can ignore
Analytics dashboards show you hundreds of metrics, and almost all of them are noise for a small business. Here are the four that change decisions.
Rebuild or repair? A test that takes ten minutes
Rebuilding a site that only needed fixing wastes money. Patching one that is structurally finished wastes more. Six questions that settle which situation you are in.
The free hour that beats most of what you can buy
For a local business, a properly filled Google Business Profile usually outperforms the website itself. It takes an hour, costs nothing, and most listings are half empty.
The spreadsheet that runs your business, and the day it goes missing
One file, one person who understands it, and no version of the business that survives losing either. How to tell when a spreadsheet has outgrown itself, and what to do about it.
Find out who actually owns your website, before you need to know
Domain, code, hosting and content can all sit in someone else's account without you realising. Four checks, twenty minutes, and the fix if the answer is wrong.