Web Design Insights

Practical guides on web design, performance, and small-business websites - from a UK agency in Shoreham-by-Sea that builds and manages every site it ships.

Type your business name into Google. If a panel comes up on the right with your address and phone number on a map, Google has a listing for you. That's normal: Google builds them from whatever it can find, and plenty of businesses have one they never asked for. Now look down that panel for a small link that says "Own this business?". If you can see it, Google doesn't think you manage the listing. Either nobody has claimed it, or someone did years ago with an old email address. Claiming it takes a few minutes, then there's a wait of a few days while Google checks. This post covers why it's worth doing round here, and then how.
Google Already Has a Listing for Your Business. Have You Claimed It?
by  Mark Kingston  •  
Type your business name into Google. If a panel comes up on the right with your address and phone number on a map, Google has a listing for you. That's normal: Google builds them from whatever it can find, and plenty of businesses have one they never asked for. Now look down that panel for a small link that says "Own this business?". If you can see it, Google doesn't think you manage the listing. Either nobody has claimed it, or someone did years ago with an old email address. Claiming it takes a few minutes, then there's a wait of a few days while Google checks. This post covers why it's worth doing round here, and then how.
People ask me this more than anything else, usually a little apologetically, as if the answer is obvious. It depends. I build websites for a living, so you would expect me to say yes, and for a lot of businesses the honest answer is "not yet". So I went and looked. I have a list of just over 17,000 Sussex businesses pulled from Google Maps, and I can see where each of their Google listings sends people. I also run the sites for a handful of local businesses and can see exactly where their visitors come from. Here is what that shows, and how to tell which side of the line you are on.
Do You Need a Website in 2026?
by  Mark Kingston  •  
People ask me this more than anything else, usually a little apologetically, as if the answer is obvious. It depends. I build websites for a living, so you would expect me to say yes, and for a lot of businesses the honest answer is "not yet". So I went and looked. I have a list of just over 17,000 Sussex businesses pulled from Google Maps, and I can see where each of their Google listings sends people. I also run the sites for a handful of local businesses and can see exactly where their visitors come from. Here is what that shows, and how to tell which side of the line you are on.
I went through the analytics on the sites I manage a few weeks ago expecting a tidying job. On one of them, 41% of the recorded traffic turned out to be coming from my own development machine. The tracking script was firing every time I opened a page to work on it, and every one of those was being counted as a visitor. That was my own bug and I have fixed it. But cleaning up the rest of the data turned up something more general: across the sites I look after, roughly one session in five came from datacentres and scraping operations rather than from anybody who might ever buy anything. If you have looked at your visitor numbers and wondered why they never turn into enquiries, this is part of the answer.
Half Your Website Traffic Isn't Human
by  Mark Kingston  •  
I went through the analytics on the sites I manage a few weeks ago expecting a tidying job. On one of them, 41% of the recorded traffic turned out to be coming from my own development machine. The tracking script was firing every time I opened a page to work on it, and every one of those was being counted as a visitor. That was my own bug and I have fixed it. But cleaning up the rest of the data turned up something more general: across the sites I look after, roughly one session in five came from datacentres and scraping operations rather than from anybody who might ever buy anything. If you have looked at your visitor numbers and wondered why they never turn into enquiries, this is part of the answer.
Someone arrived on this site last month from a link inside a ChatGPT answer. One visit. That is not a trend and I am not going to pretend it is. It was, though, the first time a machine had put my business in front of somebody who had not asked about me by name, and it sent me off to look properly at how these systems decide who to mention. The short version: most of what gets you into AI answers is the work that already gets you found in ordinary search. There is no separate lever. There are a few things genuinely worth doing, and a growing amount of expensive nonsense being sold around them, so this post tries to separate the two.
What Happens When Your Customers Ask ChatGPT Instead of Google
by  Mark Kingston  •  
Someone arrived on this site last month from a link inside a ChatGPT answer. One visit. That is not a trend and I am not going to pretend it is. It was, though, the first time a machine had put my business in front of somebody who had not asked about me by name, and it sent me off to look properly at how these systems decide who to mention. The short version: most of what gets you into AI answers is the work that already gets you found in ordinary search. There is no separate lever. There are a few things genuinely worth doing, and a growing amount of expensive nonsense being sold around them, so this post tries to separate the two.
A gym I built a site for gets more visitors from its Google listing than from anything else. That listing has a button on it pointing at a booking platform the owner stopped using months ago. It still out-performs everything else. That is roughly the state of local search for most small businesses. The website matters. The Google Business Profile matters more, it is free, and it is usually the thing nobody has looked at properly since the day it was set up. This post is what to actually do with it, plus the two things that sit around it: directory listings, and town pages on your own website.
Your Google Business Profile Is Doing More Work Than Your Website
by  Mark Kingston  •  
A gym I built a site for gets more visitors from its Google listing than from anything else. That listing has a button on it pointing at a booking platform the owner stopped using months ago. It still out-performs everything else. That is roughly the state of local search for most small businesses. The website matters. The Google Business Profile matters more, it is free, and it is usually the thing nobody has looked at properly since the day it was set up. This post is what to actually do with it, plus the two things that sit around it: directory listings, and town pages on your own website.
A common pattern I see: a small business pays £2,000 for a WordPress site in 2022. It scores 78 on PageSpeed Insights mobile. The owner is happy. By 2024, the same site scores 51. Nothing visible has changed. No one redesigned anything. The site just got slower. This is the most predictable bug in the WordPress ecosystem. It happens to almost every small business site. Here's why, and what (if anything) you can do about it.
Why WordPress Sites Get Slower Over Time
by  Mark Kingston  •  
A common pattern I see: a small business pays £2,000 for a WordPress site in 2022. It scores 78 on PageSpeed Insights mobile. The owner is happy. By 2024, the same site scores 51. Nothing visible has changed. No one redesigned anything. The site just got slower. This is the most predictable bug in the WordPress ecosystem. It happens to almost every small business site. Here's why, and what (if anything) you can do about it.
"How long does it take to build a website?" is one of the most common questions I get. The honest answer is between 1 week and 6 months, and the variation isn't mostly about the developer. It's about how prepared you are. A small business owner who has photos, copy, a clear vision, and is responsive to emails can have a professional site live in 10 to 14 days. The same person, distracted by their actual business, can stretch the same project to 4 months without anyone doing anything wrong. Here's what realistic timelines actually look like, and where the time really goes.
How Long Should a Small-Business Website Take to Build?
by  Mark Kingston  •  
"How long does it take to build a website?" is one of the most common questions I get. The honest answer is between 1 week and 6 months, and the variation isn't mostly about the developer. It's about how prepared you are. A small business owner who has photos, copy, a clear vision, and is responsive to emails can have a professional site live in 10 to 14 days. The same person, distracted by their actual business, can stretch the same project to 4 months without anyone doing anything wrong. Here's what realistic timelines actually look like, and where the time really goes.