Portsmouth
Web design built for a working city
Portsmouth is the only island city in the country. We’re 25 miles along the coast in Bognor Regis, near enough to know it properly. That compact stretch of Portsea Island holds retail, marine and defence engineering, hospitality, a large university and a dense professional services sector, all pressed up against each other.
That density changes what a website has to do. A Southsea independent, a marine engineering firm working off the dockyard and an accountancy practice in the city centre are all competing for attention inside the same few square miles, often against national names with far bigger budgets. The website is usually where that gets decided. Most of the Portsmouth sites we look at aren’t set up to win it.
Below is what we offer, how we work, and what a project with us would look like.
Working locally
Why work with a local web designer
Portsmouth is a city built around a working harbour and a population that knows what it wants. Marine and defence, retail, hospitality, education and a fast-growing service sector all rub up against each other in a small area. The businesses that do well here have a clear identity and a website that reflects it.
Being along the coast rather than in the city centre means we can get to you for a meeting when it actually matters, without charging city-centre overheads. It also means we understand the geography your customers deal with. Someone searching in Cosham or Portchester behaves differently from someone in Southsea, and the way people move on and off the island shapes how far they will travel to reach you. Someone heading to Gunwharf Quays for the afternoon is not the same customer as someone hunting for a supplier in Hilsea.
You get a personal, hands-on service. Your project gets proper attention from the first conversation through to launch and aftercare, and you always know who you are talking to.
We specialise in WordPress and we lead with conversion-focused thinking, so the site brings in enquiries rather than compliments. We’re upfront about what’s worth doing and what isn’t. No jargon, no padding, no hidden costs.
What we do
Digital services for Portsmouth businesses
Case study
A real example from just down the road
We recently designed and built a new website for Desert Pool, a CHAS-accredited groundworks and civil engineering specialist based in Bognor Regis. They work across West Sussex and into Hampshire, serving commercial and residential clients from the coastal towns through to Portsmouth and the Solent area, and needed a site that reflected the calibre of work they deliver and gave commercial developers and residential clients confidence to get in touch.
The result is a clean, confidence-led WordPress site that puts their six core service areas front and centre, displays their accreditations prominently, and gives every visitor an obvious next step. It’s the same kind of approach we’d bring to a Portsmouth project: honest strategy, considered design, and a clear focus on what the site actually needs to do for the business. The site is also structured for local search, with clear service pages and location signals that help them reach groundworks enquiries across Hampshire, Portsmouth and the Solent area.
Process
How a project works
1
Discovery and strategy
We start with a conversation, not a quote. We need to understand who your customers are, what your competitors are doing, what makes you different, and what success looks like for the project. From there we map a sitemap and a strategy that the design will serve.
2
Design and build
Designs come next, followed by a few rounds of feedback and iteration. Once you’re happy, we move into the build. A custom WordPress site with the flexibility for you to update content yourself afterwards.
3
Launch and beyond
Pre-launch we test everything (forms, links, speed, every device). Post-launch you get a snagging period, training if you want it, and the option of ongoing support. We don’t disappear once the invoice clears.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
No, most of our work happens remotely with phone, video and email. But because we’re about 25 miles along the coast in Bognor Regis, we can get to you for a meeting when it actually matters. For some clients, having that option is worth a lot.
For a small business website (around 8 to 15 pages, no ecommerce), most of our projects fall between £3,000 and £8,000. The exact cost depends on the scope, complexity and how much content support you need. We always provide a clear written proposal before any work starts.
We do have options for the more budget minded, whereby you get one of our custom templates adapted to your brand, these have minimal design options, but cost a lot less and can be built and put live typically within a week. These start from £500 for a small lift-and-shift type website.
Six to ten weeks is typical for a standard small business site, longer for ecommerce or projects with custom functionality. The biggest variable is how quickly content (copy, images, decisions) comes back from your side.
Yes. We build on WordPress specifically because it’s accessible to non-technical users. We’ll show you how to make the changes you’ll need to make, and we’re at the end of the phone if anything trips you up.
Yes, they’re core to how we work. Every site we build has SEO foundations baked in, and we think about conversion from day one. We also offer ongoing SEO and CRO services for businesses that want to keep improving after launch.
That’s a big part of what we do. We’ll audit what you’ve got, identify what’s working and what isn’t, and propose the right scope, which might be a full rebuild or might be a focused redesign of the pages that matter most.