Journal

Notes from
the build.

Thoughts on shipping products, writing code, and running an independent studio. No playbooks, just what we learned.

Posts

What a website costs in the UKFive different price ranges sit on page one for this question. The only band all five cover is £2,000 to £3,000. What moves you above or below it is not the design, it is whether your content already exists and whether you own the result.

What a website costs to runHosting and a domain come to £77 to £241 a year for a small business site in the UK. The bill only has two published prices in it. Everything else people warn you about is either free now, or it is somebody's time, and time is the part no quote includes.

Why your website is not showing up on GoogleUsually it is one of three things, and you can check all three in about five minutes without any tools. If those come back clean, the cause is more likely to be something in front of your site than something in it, and that is the part nobody writes about.

Redesign or rebuild your websiteA redesign changes how the site looks. A rebuild changes what it is. The question is not which sounds better, it is whether the thing underneath is still worth keeping, and the answer decides your budget, your timeline and whether you keep the traffic you already have.

AI chat for a small businessThe useful question is not whether an AI can answer your customers, because it can. It is what the thing costs per month, which messages it actually covers, and where the enquiry ends up once it has been answered at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night.

What AI can do for a small businessIt will not transform your business, and anyone promising that is selling something. What it will do is take three specific jobs off your plate for about the price of a phone contract, as long as you know the one thing it must never be trusted with unchecked.

How we built Hey SusanWe wanted a front desk that never goes to lunch. The interesting part was not the AI answering messages, which is table stakes now. It was one decision about where the conversation lives, and it is the reason the thing works and most bolt-on chatbots do not.

The tools we build and give awayWe build websites and apps for clients. We also build small tools for our own workflow and put them on GitHub for free. The point is not the tools themselves. It is what a studio that ships things other developers rely on tells you about the one you would hire.