Small business website examples: what each business asked for, and the site they got.

What the business asked for

“Fifty-two years of leaded lights and listed-building glazing, and not one page of it online. The order book has run on architects' address books since 1974 — but those architects are retiring, and their replacements search before they specify. Being findable is now succession planning.”

The feel they wanted

Austere, exact, third-generation. Fifty-two years of glass for listed buildings — spare words, fine tolerances, nothing decorative except the work.

What the design did with it

The order book has run on architects’ address books since 1974, and those architects are retiring. Their replacements arrive at a page kept in the firm’s own register, lead and putty and limewash, where the services are entered as a numbered condition survey and every colour is light through Fothergill glass.

Nothing on the site is decorative except the glass.

From the build notes

Fonts

Marcellus & Switzer

Colours

What the business asked for

“Nobody wants photographs of what they do, including them. Firms pretending drainage is glamorous read as liars; this one's straight-faced humour about a filthy job is exactly what customers quote back in reviews, and a visitor should meet that same deadpan honesty from the first sentence.”

The feel they wanted

Blunt and funny about a filthy job, deadly serious about doing it properly. No glamour, no pretending — straight talk from people who've seen worse.

What the design did with it

Drain work does not photograph well and the firm knows it, which leaves one picture worth having: a survey frame from inside a Peterborough pipe, roots and all, with the camera’s distance reading still on it. The out-of-hours line sits on hazard tape below it.

Foul & Storm doesn't sell drainage; it shows you the inside of your pipe and tells you the truth about it.

From the build notes

Fonts

Anton & Public Sans

Colours

What the business asked for

“We want a site that feels warm and a bit salty-coastal, never posh.”

The feel they wanted

Warm, a bit salty-coastal, never posh

What the design did with it

The site is the painted board outside a seafront kiosk: today's bake as the headline in cream capitals on harbour blue, the day's basket listed beneath it, and one yellow card pinned at an angle for the Sunday bread class, the only yellow on the page.

Harbour Loaf's site is the board by the door, not a brochure about bread.

From the build notes

Fonts

Barlow Condensed & DM Sans

Colours

What the business asked for

“The photographs must stop a couple scrolling in the first second.”

The feel they wanted

Warm, honest and a little wild, like the coast. Let the photographs do the talking; words short and personal.

What the design did with it

One photograph and almost nothing on it: a couple walking a wet Northumberland beach at sunset, her veil lifting, a castle on the headland. Inside, each wedding is told as a whole day in order rather than a grid of best shots, and the prices have a page of their own.

One wedding day on the Northumberland coast, told in order from first light to the last dance on a page of pale sand, with a quiet voice between chapters and the date check always one glance away.

From the build notes

Fonts

Zodiak & Newsreader

Colours

What the design did

Most insulation sites open by selling insulation. This one opens with a wall you can drag between a thermal survey and the same brick in daylight, labelled where the heat is going, and one of those labels says the wall is solid nine-inch, cannot be cavity-filled, and can only be read.

It has a section called 'Sometimes insulation is not the answer', which is the opposite of what an insulation company's website is for.

From the build notes

Fonts

Archivo & Source Sans 3

Colours

What the business asked for

“Stone is bought once and lived on for thirty years, so the decision is slow and evidence-hungry. Photographs of finished floors are worth less than photographs of the substrate being prepared.”

The feel they wanted

Limestone, slate and the hiss of a wet saw. Slow, quiet work in rooms people are still living in, and a broom out before the van doors shut.

What the design did with it

The one thing this trade never photographs is the unfinished job, and that is what fills the screen here: a Frome hallway shot from floor level, reclaimed flags dry-laid with the gaps still open between them, a spirit level and a pair of boots at the far end, a broom already leaning by the door. The name is cut across the middle in letterspaced Marcellus, and the heading further down says that old floors are not flat and that this is the point.

The site is a dry lay of the business: the work, the method, the 147 opinions, placed on the floor for you to walk over and judge.

From the build notes

Fonts

Marcellus & Source Sans 3

Colours

What the design did

A roof is the one part of a house its owner has never seen, so the page builds the evidence rather than printing it: ninety-six slates laid in six staggered courses, one for every review, each one lifting under the cursor to show its place in the tally. The services list is not a list of services either, but the city's roof stock as a roofer finds it, slate on the Victorian terraces, tile on the thirties semis, felt over the kitchen extensions.

Fonts

Big Shoulders & Fira Sans

Colours

What the business asked for

“Nobody chooses this firm because they liked them. They choose it because it is the only quote with a completion date on it, and because a homeowner nine weeks from having no kitchen is buying certainty rather than craftsmanship.”

The feel they wanted

Four crews, ninety builds a year, a finish date written into the contract. Scaffold Monday, skip on the drive, dust everywhere — loud about price, no charm.

What the design did with it

A homeowner nine weeks from losing their kitchen is buying certainty, not craftsmanship, and the page is arranged to say so before anything else. Fixed price, fixed date, it is in the contract, set at the size a hoarding would use, and directly beneath it a real build with the figure attached: rear extension, Penn Fields, £52,400, fixed.

The price board is set in Anton at poster size and the contract clauses are printed underneath it as clauses — the one site here that leads with money and does not apologise for it.

From the build notes

Fonts

Anton & Public Sans

Colours

What the business asked for

“Something that looks like Stoke and not like every other barbers site with a black background and a pole.”

The feel they wanted

Local, plain-spoken, distinctly Stoke; avoid the black-background-and-barber-pole look

What the design did with it

No black and no pole. The name is stacked in cream capitals on fired-brick red, KILN the biggest word, beside a dusk photograph of Longton's bottle kilns over a wet cobbled street, and the next things on the page are the ones a walk-in asks: the prices, the hours and whether it's busy.

There is no 'book now' button anywhere on the page, and that absence is part of the move.

From the build notes

Fonts

Bricolage Grotesque & IBM Plex Mono

Colours

What the business asked for

“87 reviews and not one mentions price. They mention crying happily, healed photographs at six weeks, and travelling down from London. Customers already treat it as a destination, and a first-time visitor should arrive at the same conclusion.”

The feel they wanted

Dark, art-first, quietly intense. Two artists, monthly booking drops, no walk-ins. Serious about craft, allergic to high-street tattoo clichés.

What the design did with it

Bookings open once a month and are gone in a weekend, and until now the queue lived in an Instagram inbox. The next open date now takes the whole first screen, set at the size a poster would use, with one thing to do underneath it.

Beneath the date, one quiet line of ledger type: '5.0 across 87 reviews' — stated once, never repeated, never badged.

From the build notes

Fonts

Cormorant & Newsreader

Colours

What the business asked for

“Rewiring is bought on trust about mess and disruption, not on price. The customer's real question is what their house will look like on the last evening, and almost nobody answers it.”

The feel they wanted

Old houses, floorboards up, the smell of perished rubber cable. Careful in other people's homes — dust sheets down before anything else.

What the design did with it

What the customer is frightened of is the mess, not the bill, so there is no electricity anywhere on the first screen. One oak board has been eased up out of an otherwise immaculate floor with a work lamp burning in the hole beneath it, the dust sheets are folded at the edge of the frame, and the navigation is the job in order: the method, old rubber and new copper, the houses we know, put back as found.

The camera behaves the way Pennant behaves — respectfully, without disturbing anything.

From the build notes

Fonts

Cabinet Grotesk & Source Sans 3

Colours

What the business asked for

“Most local outfits are one man and a saw who won't touch the big dismantles. Hold Fast climbs what others refuse — cranes, storm-cracked hardwoods over roofs. A caller with a frightening tree must know they've reached the crew that says yes, and that the swagger comes with method statements.”

The feel they wanted

Outdoor swagger with method statements. Calm in high places, happiest on the jobs others turn down — adrenaline fully under control.

What the design did with it

Half the reviews describe watching the climb and half describe a storm call answered within the hour. The picture is a two tonne stem hanging over a roof, and the arithmetic holding it is drawn onto the photograph: pick point, section weight, drop zone clear.

Hold Fast is the rigger's promise: nothing moves until it's meant to, and then it lands exactly where the plan said it would.

From the build notes

Fonts

Anton & Public Sans

Colours

What the business asked for

“A village garage's asset is forty years of the same families, and none of it is visible to anyone searching from outside. The site's job is to make an insider's reputation legible to a newcomer.”

The feel they wanted

A yard that smells of oil and hot brake dust, a dog asleep under the desk, and whoever is stuck at the roadside goes first.

What the design did with it

Forty-eight years of the same families is worth nothing to a stranger searching from outside, so the page hands them the evidence instead. A mud-caked pickup sits on the ramp with the yard dog asleep beneath it, the promise is set in transport lettering at the size it would be painted on a gable, and a line of ledger type under it carries 4.8 from 431 opinions, est. 1978, recovery within twenty miles. Further down is a shelf of worn parts, each one captioned with the noise it was making and whether the quote moved.

Anything that looks like marketing will read as a lie.

From the build notes

Fonts

Archivo & Hanken Grotesk

Colours

What the business asked for

“They move sixty households a week at the cheapest rate in Leeds and are proud of the number — yet today it hides behind a quote form. A visitor should never have to ask what it costs; the price is the promise, and everything else is proof the crew turns up on time.”

The feel they wanted

Loud, cheap, proud, Yorkshire. Publishes its prices, hates quote-form games, brings a bit of cheek. Market-stall confidence, zero corporate polish.

What the design did with it

The cheapest hourly rate in Leeds was the whole argument, and a quote form was hiding it. £45 an hour now sits larger than the firm’s own name, beside a chalked board of this week’s free days, above a price list where stairs and fuel are entered as £0.

The whole site is the side of the van and the front of the stall — everything painted on, nothing hidden behind a form.

From the build notes

Fonts

Anton & Archivo

Colours

What the business asked for

“43 reviews in seventeen years because there have only been two hundred clients — and the same arc recurs: nervousness about the spend, then relief at being calmly walked through it. A first-time visitor should feel that same de-escalation begin before anyone from the studio has spoken to them.”

The feel they wanted

Quiet luxury. Unhurried, spare, certain. Never persuades, never discounts, assumes taste — the calm of the showroom in everything it says.

What the design did with it

Fourteen rooms a year, every one of them by referral, meant the site had to stop selling. It opens as sheet 01 of a drawing set, corner marks and title block and scale, and the only sentence on that screen is about how the kitchen gets drawn.

They have already visited the glossy national showrooms and found them loud.

From the build notes

Fonts

Switzer & Switzer

Colours

What the business asked for

“Decorating is one of the few trades a customer will watch being done, inside their home, for days. The page is auditioning for that intimacy more than for the finish.”

What the design did with it

One photograph split by a seam you can drag: a finished wall in deep teal over oak boards on one side, the same wall as bare plaster with the light switch masked on the other, and the job entered beneath it like a line in a ledger, street, room and five days on site.

An archive, not a shopfront.

From the build notes

Fonts

Archivo & Source Serif 4

Colours

What the business asked for

“I don't want photos of the children's faces online, so whatever you do will need to work without them.”

What the design did with it

A nursery site with no children in it, by the owner's choice, so the camera stays at welly height instead: a weathered gate propped open beside old brick, soil on the doormat, and the answers parents ask every week, fees, funded hours and September spaces, pinned up just below.

The gate propped open at welly height, with this week's answers pinned plainly to the back door.

From the build notes

Fonts

Fraunces & Nunito

Colours

What the business asked for

“187 reviews with an odd signature: customers quote figures back — “a 0.4-ohm fault two others missed”, “a fourteen-page test report”. When clients brag about documentation, the documentation is the reputation, and every promise the firm makes should be as checkable as its certificates.”

The feel they wanted

Engineering-precise, proud of the paperwork. Calm, technical, quietly modern — tested twice, documented once, explained in numbers. No exclamation marks.

What the design did with it

Customers keep these quotes and hire off them, itemised circuit by circuit with the test values promised up front. The rating on the page is set as 4.9/5.0, n=187, inside a specification table, and the photograph is captioned like a figure in a report, down to the 7kW supply.

Kelvin & Wren's site behaves like the documentation it promises: a calibration label on a well-made instrument.

From the build notes

Fonts

Archivo & Archivo

Colours

What the business asked for

“We serve seasonal small plates and natural wines in a converted 18th-century coaching inn.”

The feel they wanted

Warm, soulful, historic yet modern, inviting.

What the design did with it

A coaching inn from the 1700s, so the first screen is the inn's own line, Where Old Stone Meets New Fire, in a light serif with the fire in copper italic, and one copper button to reserve a table.

The Copper Fox lives where old stone meets new fire — a digital coaching inn that radiates the warmth of a place already alive before you arrive.

From the build notes

Fonts

Cormorant Garamond & Work Sans

Colours

What the business asked for

“Pastries change with the fortnight, never with the season.”

The feel they wanted

Quiet confidence, authentic, refined, artisanal

What the design did with it

The pastries change every fortnight, so the site counts them: this fortnight's number set above one light serif line, a patisserie that rewrites itself every fortnight, on a cream wall in north light.

La Quinzaine is the hush of a shop that changes what it makes every fortnight because that is how Élodie learned to bake in Lyon.

From the build notes

Fonts

Cormorant Garamond & Inter

Colours

What the business asked for

“Seventeen years, one man, and the phone is the entire business — answered personally at 3am, on Boxing Day, every night in between. His livelihood is whether a panicking stranger on a doorstep can find him and feel certain enough to dial within thirty seconds of searching.”

The feel they wanted

One man, one van, seventeen years of answering his own phone at 3am. Urgent, plain, unadorned — every word says: call now, he will pick up.

What the design did with it

The whole business is whether a stranger on a doorstep at 3am believes a person will answer. The page reads the Walsall clock back to them, says the locksmith answers and never a call centre, and sets ring now at the size it would be painted on the van.

Whatever hour you land, the site looks you in the eye and confirms the one thing you're worried about: he picks up now.

From the build notes

Fonts

Big Shoulders & Hanken Grotesk

Colours

What the business asked for

“208 local reviews split cleanly: the five-stars name the same cleaner visit after visit; the rare three-stars describe a rota change nobody warned them about. Consistency is what's actually being bought, and the business should be chosen — and judged — on exactly that promise.”

The feel they wanted

Systematised and reassuring, corporate-tidy with a warm local face. Uniforms, checklists, vetted staff — the same clean, every visit, guaranteed.

What the design did with it

A national template that could be about any town was the thing to beat. The card on the front of the site names Milton Keynes, Bletchley and Newport Pagnell, and what it promises is the same cleaner on the same day rather than anything about the company.

The whole site reads like MintDoor's own paperwork made beautiful: a round card, a key log, a checklist that ticks itself off in front of you.

From the build notes

Fonts

Quicksand & Source Sans 3

Colours