Insights
Articles about why company websites fail, what can be done about it, and how to set marketing up so that somebody actually visits the site.
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Directories and backlinks: what still works
An answer to the cold call selling a listing for nine thousand. Three kinds of offer and how to answer each, what Google's policies say about bought links, and how to measure in a week whether a listing brought you anything.
Read on
Do you need a photo shoot for your website
When a phone is enough, when stock is fine and when a shoot pays off. What to ask a photographer for so the pictures fit the layout, and why the shoot comes after the page designs.
Read onWebsites for tradespeople and small workshops
For a local service a Google profile brings in more people than a website. What belongs on the site, why a missing service area costs you calls, how to photograph finished work on a phone, and when you do not need a site at all.
Read onCase studies people actually read
A logo without a number is decoration. The five parts of a usable case study, how to ask for one at handover, what to do when the client will not be named, and when a reference does harm.
Read onHow many pages should a company website have
The page count is a consequence of the brief, not the brief. Four questions that decide whether a topic deserves its own page, recommended ranges by type of company, and how to read scope out of a quote.
Read onWhat belongs on a company home page
Nine sections in an order that follows the questions in a visitor's head. What belongs above the fold, what does not belong on a home page at all, and a five second test you can run yourself.
Read onWhy Google cannot find us. Eight causes and how to spot yours
Start by separating two things: whether the engine does not know you, or knows you and ranks you lower. Eight causes from a leftover indexing block to content written in company jargon, each with a test you can run yourself.
Read onWhat a company website must meet by law. A 2026 checklist
Eleven duties a company website has picked up in five years, each with its date, its enforcer and what is at stake. Including what started to apply on 2 August 2026, and including the ones that do not apply to you.
Read onThe Google Business Profile: when it beats your website
For a local service everything is decided on one screen. What sets the order in maps, why the primary category matters more than copy, what is allowed with reviews and how to tell whether calls are coming in.
Read onI will build the site with AI this afternoon. When that works and when it does not
What such a tool actually produces, what is still missing and what the missing part costs. Including the cases where building it yourself is the right answer, and eight steps for anybody who does.
Read onYour web supplier has gone quiet. What to do and in what order
A procedure for this afternoon. What to check in the first hour, why the domain comes before the source code, what you can get without the supplier, and when the silence is just an unpaid invoice.
Read onWhen to leave a hosted online shop, and when to stay
Five thresholds that show the platform is holding you back. One on its own means stay. What a migration actually involves, what to fear, and why most people who find this article should stay put.
Read onHow to convince management the website needs rebuilding
Management does not care about load times or page structure. It cares what it costs, what it produces and what happens if nothing is done. Three numbers you already have, a one page proposal, and answers to the four objections that always come.
Read onWhen is it time for a new website, and when a repair will do
Eight signs a website has had its day, each with an honest answer about whether it is a repair or a rebuild. Half of them can be solved without a new site. Plus three checks that take twenty minutes and decide for you.
Read onSecuring your company website: what to do before anything happens
Most outages have nothing to do with attacks. What has to be ready in advance, why a backup without a tested restore is just a feeling, what to do in the first hour, and when it is not worth bothering with.
Read onQuestions to ask a web agency before you sign
Twenty questions that surface what the quote never mentions: who ends up owning the domain and the code, what gets billed on top, how many hours it takes from your side, and what happens after launch. Each with the good answer and the warning sign.
Read onHow to tell for yourself whether your website pays off
Four numbers and a calculator are enough. How to work out payback, why average conversion rates from the internet are useless, how to measure enquiries that arrive by phone, and four traps that lead companies to decide soundly and wrongly.
Read onWhere you can save on a website and where it costs you later
The quote is 95 thousand and the budget is 60. What to drop without consequence, what to postpone, and what not to touch even if it means delaying the site by six months.
Read onWho should write your website copy
Copy is the most common reason a website runs a month over. Why copy from the company is correct and lifeless, why copy from an outsider is empty, and how to supply material in twenty minutes instead of four weeks.
Read onA content editor you are not afraid to open
A client wants to swap a photo, opens the editor and e-mails the supplier instead. The ten minute test that judges an editor before you order, six marks of a good one, and four traps that only surface after a year.
Read onWhy paying more for a website pays off, and when a cheap site is just an expensive business card
A cheap website is not a cheaper version of an expensive one. It is a different product: a ready made template, someone else's decisions and no measurement at all. How many hours of work a given price buys, where the difference shows up in enquiries, and when paying little is the right answer.
Read onFreelancer, agency, or two people. What the money actually buys
From an agency you buy capacity and certainty, from a small supplier attention. What sits in the price of each, where each one is weak, and five questions that expose the difference before you sign.
Read onWhat to prepare before you ask for website quotes
Three quotes for the same website come back at 24, 68 and 190 thousand, and all of them can be honest. The seven point brief that makes quotes comparable, and the four things that do not belong in a brief at all.
Read onCookie banners: what they are for and when a site does not need one
A consent banner is not an obligation that lands on every website. It follows from a decision to measure traffic with somebody else's script in the browser. What that costs you in money, in speed and above all in data, and what measurement with nothing to consent to looks like.
Read onWeb accessibility is no longer optional. It may not apply to you though
An accessibility act has applied since 28 June 2025 and sales copy warns of fines. What it leaves out is the micro-enterprise exemption, which covers services too. Three questions to find out whether the duty applies to you, and five checks you can run yourself in half an hour.
Read onHow long does a company website take, and what happens in each week
Schedules almost never slip because of programming. They slip waiting for copy, photos and answers. Six weeks broken down week by week, the hours it takes from your own people, and the five things that reliably hold a project up.
Read onHow to redesign a website without losing your Google rankings
The new site goes live on Friday and by Monday nobody can find you. What to do before launch, what a redirect map looks like, the five mistakes that really cost rankings, and how to tell a normal dip from a fault.
Read onWho owns your domain, your code and your data
A company buys a website and gets nothing to show for it. How to check who holds the domain in five minutes, why paying for code does not make it yours, and what to do when you are already stuck.
Read onMarketing from A to Z: the complete overview for 2026
Everything marketing covers, from strategy and brand through website, search and content to data, law and artificial intelligence. A reference document with the order of steps, a checklist of twenty three questions and the sixteen most common mistakes.
Read onHow to get your business into ChatGPT answers and Google AI Overviews
Language model crawlers already visit company websites, and over our measured week they matched Googlebot. Your analytics will not show them. What a model takes from a page, eight steps worth taking, and three things that sell but do not work.
Read onDo you need an online shop, or is an enquiry form enough
The question comes up on every second call. For made-to-order manufacturing and for companies selling to companies, the answer is almost always no. An online shop is not a page with a basket, it is an operation somebody has to run every day.
Read onPageSpeed Insights explained: what those numbers mean for your business
A green circle with 98 in it, or a red forty two. What those numbers actually measure, which of them decide, what counts as good and bad, why mobile scores differently from desktop, and why chasing a hundred rarely pays. Explained without the jargon.
Read onLight and dark mode: not a matter of taste but a function
A white sheet of screen at eleven at night closes a tab as reliably as an unreadable dark site does in daylight. What research says about both modes, why dark mode is not healthier, who it genuinely helps, and everything a site needs before you can say it has dark mode.
Read onFifteen years on shop floors. Now I build websites people actually use
This text launches the website you are on. I have been writing code since I was fifteen, running my own online shops for twelve years, and I spent fifteen years walking around production plants as a safety specialist. That last part looks like a detour and is the most valuable thing I bring to building websites.
Read onWhat a manufacturer's website needs to win the buyer over
Sixty per cent of the decision happens online before an engineer or a buyer approaches anybody. Both are looking for things marketing never provides: parameters as numbers, datasheets, capacity, certificates with validity dates and the name of somebody who answers the phone. This is the list of what a manufacturer's website has to have, and the order to fill the gaps in.
Read onWhy your company website gets traffic but no enquiries
Analytics shows thousands of visits and the phone stays silent. Traffic is not the problem: it is proof the problem sits in the few dozen seconds between opening the page and leaving. Five common reasons, each with a test you can run on your own site this afternoon.
Read onWhat a custom company website costs in 2026 and what pushes the price up
An answer of anywhere from fifteen thousand to half a million is as useful as saying a car costs between a hundred thousand and ten million. So I broke my own price list into line items, added the nine things that genuinely push the price up, and worked out what a website costs over five years of running it. No asterisks and no “price on request”.
Read onSlow ecommerce admin: the hidden tax you pay every day
On a shop with fifty thousand items this is not about a few lost seconds. A slow system can take 15 to 80 minutes a day from one administrator. Over a year that is 1.5 to 7.5 weeks of work spent watching a blank screen.
Read onWebnode, Shoptet and the rest: a website builder stops you exactly when you start to grow
A website builder gets you online over a weekend and the first year feels like a bargain. The problem arrives in year three, when you realise you are renting something you do not own, cannot fully export, and which will not do the one thing you now need.
Read onWhy WordPress no longer makes sense in 2026
Your site is not slow because the server is small. It is slow because it stands on a twenty year old idea that tries to be everything for everyone. You pay for that in customers who never arrive.
Read onWhat is changing in websites and marketing, and what actually works
At most one email a month. Findings from practice, numbers we measured ourselves, and the things that did not work.
- At most one email a month
- One click to unsubscribe
- We never pass the address on or sell it
Notes from the field
Once you confirm, we send the ten things you can check on your own site in an hour.
Every extra second costs you enquiries
This is not a technical hobby. Speed decides how many people even reach your form, and Google uses it when ranking results.
+21.6%
completion of enquiry forms
That many more people finished an enquiry when the site got one tenth of a second faster. Measured on lead generation sites, the same type you most likely need.
Google and Deloitte, 2020, 30 million sessions
3×
higher conversion rate
A business site loading in one second against one loading in five. Analysis across more than a hundred million page views.
Portent, updated 2022
+8%
increase in sales after speeding up
Vodafone improved content rendering by 31 % and a controlled test on half of its visitors showed an 8 % rise in sales. This is the only kind of evidence that actually proves cause.
A/B test, Vodafone Italy, 2021
What Google actually measures
Google confirms in its documentation that these three metrics feed its ranking systems. What counts are real loads by real visitors, not a lab test.
- Largest content paintedLCP
- under 2.5 s
- Response to first interactionINP
- under 200 ms
- Layout shifting while loadingCLS
- under 0.1
An honest note: most speed studies show correlation, not direct cause. Fast sites tend to be better built overall, so part of the effect belongs to that. Only controlled tests where speed alone changed are conclusive. That is why Vodafone is on the list.
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