J.J. & A.W. Skeet
Surfacing and groundworks across Ryedale, York and Scarborough. Built to prove a family firm is exactly that.
Web design · Pickering
Your customers decide before they arrive.
A lot of Pickering trade walks in off the street. A lot more of it was decided the night before, on a phone, by somebody working out where to eat, stay or shop when they get here.
- Websites from £400
- Content written for you
- Built for visitors on phones
The problem
What we see in Pickering
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Visitors research the town before they set off
Somebody coming for the railway or heading onto the moors plans the day in advance: where to have lunch, where to park, what is worth stopping for. If your business does not turn up in that planning, the footfall walks past you to somewhere that did.
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Opening hours are the most-wanted and least-published fact
Seasonal hours, half-days, closing early in winter. A visitor who cannot confirm you are open goes somewhere they can. It is a trivial thing to publish and it costs real money not to.
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Independents look smaller online than they are
Pickering is full of long-established independent shops, butchers, bakers, galleries and places to eat, several of which have been trading for generations. A number of them have a website that suggests a much newer, much smaller operation.
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Trade is lopsided across the year
Summer takes care of itself. February does not. A website that only speaks to visitors leaves the quieter months entirely to chance, when it could be working on the local trade that keeps a business going out of season.
Locally
Two markets, one high street
Pickering runs on two customers at once. There is the visitor economy: the railway, the moors, the market, the day-trippers. And there is the local one, the people who live here and in the villages around and shop here all year.
Most Pickering websites are built for one and quietly ignore the other. A restaurant page written entirely for tourists says nothing to the couple two miles away deciding where to go on a Wednesday. A trade business that never mentions the villages it covers misses half its catchment.
The practical answer is not two websites. It is a site that is specific about both: what you offer, when you are open, who you serve, and where. A page aimed at locals and a page aimed at visitors can happily live on the same ten-page site, and between them they cover the whole year.
For businesses here that are not visitor-facing at all: the builders, electricians, garages and professional services working across the Vale of Pickering, the job is more straightforward. Be findable for what you do plus where you do it, and look like a firm worth ringing.
Work
Sites we have built nearby
Both of these are businesses within a few miles of here.
A & J Plant Sales
A filterable machinery listing with a page per machine and a sold archive, run entirely by the dealer.
Sectors
Businesses we work with around Pickering
Pricing
What it costs
Published, the same for everyone, and the same whether you are up the road or an hour away.
Essential
Up to 5 pages
£400
- Designed for your business, not a template
- Every word written for you
- Fast on a phone, where most people find you
- Enquiries land straight in your inbox
- Built so Google can read it
- Domain, hosting and email sorted
- One round of revisions
Recommended
Complete
Up to 10 pages
£800
- Everything in Essential
- A page per service, so each one can rank
- An areas page, so nearby customers find you
- A fuller work section to win the job
- More internal linking between pages
- One round of revisions
Advanced
Bespoke build
£1,200+
- Everything in Complete
- Built around what your business actually does
- Filterable listings, bookings or directories
- Connected to systems you already use
- Scoped and quoted before anything starts
Need a page or two more than the package allows? We will quote for the extra pages before you commit to anything, so you know the full cost up front. See the full comparison.
FAQs
Questions from Pickering businesses
We get plenty of passing trade. Is a website worth it?
Passing trade is the part you cannot influence. The website works on the part you can: the visitor deciding the night before, and the local deciding in the off-season. It is not there to replace the footfall, it is there to add to it.
Is Facebook enough?
It is good at reaching people who already follow you and poor at being found by people who do not. It also does not turn up when somebody searches for what you do, and you do not control it. A website and a Facebook page do different jobs.
We are a small shop. Do we need ten pages?
Probably not. Five is usually right for a single-site retailer or a café: home, what you do, opening hours and finding you, a bit about the business, and contact. Ten makes sense once you have several distinct services worth their own page.
Can you help with Google Maps listings?
Yes, and for a business like yours it may matter more than the website. Getting the profile claimed, accurate, photographed and reviewed is often the highest-return hour anyone spends.
Advice
Useful before you decide
What a small business website actually needs
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