Bespoke websites for the growers, processors and family firms of the Capital of the Fens, from the pack-houses to the independents around the Old Market and the professional practices on Hill Street. Since 2001 I have made more than 1,600 websites, and each new one is still designed and built by me alone.
Wisbech stands on the River Nene, with one of the finest Georgian streets in England on North Brink and an economy built on agriculture and food: apples, brassicas, potatoes and soft fruit, the pack-houses and processors, and the supply chain around them. In the town centre there are independents around the Old Market, professional services on Hill Street, and family businesses that have been going for generations.
A business with that kind of history seldom needs telling what it does well. What it needs is a website that says so as plainly as the family would across a table: to a buyer who has never visited, to a customer comparing suppliers, and to whoever takes the business on next. It also needs that website to stay in good order, and in the same hands, for years rather than months.
I work with businesses across Cambridgeshire and the Fens from a studio in Littleport, just outside Ely, and Wisbech is about 35 minutes from Ely. Most of the work happens over email and video calls, with files moving cleanly between us.
This is a raw dog food kitchen near Peterborough that sells to the trade and to the public from the same website, shown whole. The concerns will be familiar to any business that packs to order and sells to the trade: prices that differ from one kind of customer to the next, packing that has to be right first time, and stock figures that must match what is actually in store.
Hand-prepared raw dog food from a DEFRA-approved kitchen at Langtoft, near Peterborough, sold to households, trade customers, breeders and stockists. Each kind of account sees its own prices and pays in the way that suits it, packing runs on a handheld barcode scanner straight from the freezer, and the stock shown on the website now matches the freezer.
Read the case study
A website takes about four weeks from the first call, and an online shop about six. The launch date is fixed in writing before the first week begins, and nothing moves on until you have agreed the stage before it.
The first call is free, takes place on Zoom or in Wisbech, and carries no obligation either way. A written proposal follows within two working days, with one fixed price, the launch date and everything the price includes.
We begin with a proper conversation about the business, the people you want to reach and what the site has to do, followed by the page plan, the design direction and the points where I will need something from you, all agreed before anything is built.
The key pages are designed around your customer rather than your organisation chart, after which come the words, the development and the search set-up, on real pages at a real address, with a check-in at the end of each week.
We go live together, and I show you round the editor in a 30-minute session, with a written guide to the things you will change most often.
Once the website is live, it stays in the same hands. Changes are made by me rather than passed to a queue, every email is read and answered by me no later than the end of the next working day, and a trusted associate is on call for cover when I am away. A care plan covers the hosting, daily backups, security and updates, with a monthly report; it is monthly and rolling, and should you ever leave, you keep everything.
“Adam built our website over 10 years ago and updates it regularly keeping us at the top of searches constantly and also offers great advice on what we need to do to keep it there too, highly recommended if you need your existing site updated or a new website built from scratch”
If yours is not among them, you are welcome to send it to me, and I will answer it plainly.
Every commission is quoted to the job, whether you bring your own words and photographs or would like the research, the words and the photography handled for you. The figure in the proposal is the figure you pay, however long the work takes, and should the scope change, the new price is agreed in writing before the extra work happens. Larger projects are paid in three stages: a deposit, a payment on approval of the design, and the balance before launch.
I do the work myself, and there is no account manager, no junior and no outsourcing: the person you brief is the person who designs and builds the website, from the first page plan to the launch.
Not at all; there are a good many clients whom I have only ever met on Zoom, and the work is no worse for it. Wisbech is close enough, though, that I am glad to come over for the first conversation, a photography day or the launch, should you prefer to meet face to face.
That is much of the point. Every site I build has the search basics done properly from the first day: a clean structure, sensible page titles, quick load times, local schema and your Google Business Profile. For a Wisbech business competing in local search, that foundation does a great deal of the work, and ongoing SEO builds on it over the months that follow, should you want it.
The new site goes live on the domain you already have, and the old one is kept so that it can be put back at once should anything be wrong. Every account ends up in your name: the domain, the hosting, the email and the analytics.
The full service has a page of its own, and so do the towns nearest Wisbech.
It begins with thirty minutes on a call, on Zoom or in Wisbech, or a note in the form, and I will reply by the end of the next working day. It helps to come with a real project in mind, so that the half hour is well spent: what the business does, who it sells to, and where the current website falls short. If I can help, the written proposal follows within two working days, and if I am not the right fit, I will say so.
Or write to enquiries@adamlord.co.uk. For a fuller picture, the project brief takes about ten minutes.
It has come straight to me rather than to a queue, and I will reply by the end of the next working day.