What “editorial quality” actually means for a small business website.
The phrase gets thrown around. Here's what we hold a site to before we let it ship: typography, photographs, layout, voice. And why most builders settle for less.
The Themesmith blog
The blog
Notes from building it.
Opinion, process, craft, and case studies on building, hosting, and looking after small business websites at editorial quality. Written by the founder, published quarterly.
The latest pieceEight-minute read
Six more
Also recent.
Three pages, no homepage: why some sites don't need one.
The architecture is the brief. A small dental practice doesn't need a homepage. It needs a booking page, a treatments page, and a directions page. Notes on resisting the homepage default.
How we approach photography for businesses without a budget for a shoot.
Stock libraries are death; phone-camera shots in the workshop are gold. A working note on getting honest imagery onto a small business site without an art-director on the line.
Working notes, May 2026.
A quarterly working note. What shipped, what we're working on, what we got wrong. Honest and short.
On rescuing rather than rebuilding.
The case for restoration over from-zero rebuilds: when the brief is still good, the brand is still good, the customer history is still good, and the only thing failing is the wrapper.
Why we charge by the page, not by the project.
Project rates punish small briefs and reward bloated ones. Per-page rates are cleaner, fairer to the customer, and easier to plan around. Notes on a pricing model that rewards restraint.
From the archive
Earlier pieces.
- ProcessThe half-hour ruleWhy we don't compress the build to twelve minutes even though we could.
- OpinionOn naming thingsWhy “Themesmith”. The metaphor came first; the word followed.
- CraftChoosing a typeface for a small businessPractical pairing rules. Why never Helvetica.
- ProcessWorking email, working delivery, working thank-youMost small business contact forms are quietly broken. What makes one work.
- OpinionWhat “quality” costsA small business website used to cost £30,000. Now it's £15 a month. The maths underneath.
- OpinionVoice over volumeThe argument for quarterly + ad-hoc as the right cadence.
- CraftThe 60-character rulePage titles, subject lines, social-card text. The discipline of writing for sixty characters.
The blog · updated quarterlywritten by the founderThemesmith.ai Ltd · Brighton