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

The feel they wanted

Women-led and matter-of-fact about it. Reassuring, punctual, straightforward, for anyone who wants to feel completely at ease about who's in their home.

What the design did with it

The firm is women-led, and that had been sitting in the footer. Now it’s in the opening sentence. Arriving on time is the firm’s promise, so it became the headline: we arrive at 8:40, not sometime in the morning.

What they asked for

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

What the design did with it

It looks like the painted board outside a seafront kiosk. Today’s bake is the headline, in cream capitals on harbour blue, with the day’s bread listed underneath. The Sunday bread class gets one yellow card pinned at an angle, the only yellow on the page.

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

The home page is one photograph with almost nothing on it: a couple on a wet Northumberland beach at sunset, her veil lifting. Each wedding inside runs through the whole day in order, and prices get their own page.

The feel they wanted

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

What the design did with it

Drain work doesn’t photograph well, and the firm knows it. So the one picture is a survey camera frame from inside a Peterborough pipe, roots and all, with the distance reading still on it. The out-of-hours number sits on hazard tape underneath.

The feel they wanted

Bright, warm, plain-spoken, faintly cheeky. Accountancy for people who'd rather be making things: jargon-free, human, nothing navy about it.

What the design did with it

The brief said every accountant’s site in Glasgow is navy. This one has none: warm off-white, one marigold highlight, and a headline about people who’d rather be making things.

The feel they wanted

Clock-obsessed and cheerfully impatient. Speed is the product, the promise and the personality: brisk, modern, mobile, no waiting-room smell.

What the design did with it

The name has a number in it, so the number opens the page: a clock at headline size counting down from 45 minutes, and under it the site’s own line, “The name isn’t marketing. It’s the deadline.”

What they asked for

“About half of what I sell I grow myself on an allotment and a borrowed field outside town, so what's in the shop changes every week and I'd love the website to show that rather than the same five bouquets.”

What the design did with it

The headline is this week’s stock: dahlias, the last of the cosmos, rosehips from the hedge, sedum going over. It carries a date, and next to it is this week’s bucket on the back bench, with an order button.