Where I work
Looking for a website designer near you?
I am one person in England building SEO-led websites for small and growing businesses. Most clients are in Kent, Sussex and London, and the rest are wherever the work is.
Werehouse Media is one person, Ed, based in England, working with small businesses anywhere in England. The work is concentrated around Kent, Sussex and London, and everywhere else in the country is handled remotely on a kick-off call, a private preview link and email. Distance changes neither the price nor the timeline: a single page starts at £495, a multi-page build runs £1,795 upwards with the timeline set at quote stage, and Search groundwork is included in every build. Being nearby only helps with photography and meeting face to face, which is easy to arrange in Kent, Sussex and London.
The patch
Near you matters less than it used to.
Being local helps when you want someone to walk your site, photograph your workshop or sit across a table. It matters far less for the build itself. What actually decides whether you get found is whether your site has a real page for each service you sell and each town you sell it in, and whether your Google Business Profile is set up properly. That work is identical whether I am ten minutes away or two hundred miles.
01
Kent
Maidstone, Canterbury, Ashford, Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks, Medway and the villages in between.
Most of my trade and local-service work is here: heating engineers, garages, clinics and builders who want to show up when someone two towns over searches at seven in the morning.
02
Sussex
Brighton, Hove, Lewes, Eastbourne, Worthing, Haywards Heath and the South Downs.
A lot of design-led and independent retail work. Brighton in particular is a crowded market, which makes the structural SEO work matter more than the design does.
03
London
Central, South and the commuter belt.
Mainly professional and regulated firms, plus e-commerce. Budgets and competition are both higher, and the sites usually need to do more than look good.
04
Everywhere else in England
Remote, and it works fine.
The whole process runs on calls, a shared preview link and email. A build runs perfectly well without ever meeting in person. If you would rather do it face to face and you are within an hour or so, that is easy to arrange.
If you are searching for a web designer near you and getting national lead-generation sites that sell your enquiry on to five different firms, that is what I am the alternative to. You deal with the person doing the work.
Area by area
How does the work actually run where you are?
There is no office to visit, on this list or anywhere else. Werehouse Media is a remote studio in England. The build runs the same way in every row below, and only the meetings and the search work change.
| Area | How the work usually runs | Local SEO work that applies |
|---|---|---|
| Kent Maidstone, Canterbury, Ashford, Tunbridge Wells, Medway | Remote by default. This is the one area where an in-person kick-off or a photography day is straightforward to arrange. | A page for each town you actually send a van to, and a Google Business Profile with the service area drawn properly rather than left as a single pin. |
| Sussex Brighton, Hove, Lewes, Eastbourne, Worthing | Remote, with occasional in-person meetings. Brighton and Hove are a short trip. Eastbourne and Worthing usually stay on a call. | Brighton is a crowded market, so service-plus-town pages and the local directories your competitors already sit in matter more than the design does. |
| London Central, south and the commuter belt | Remote. Meetings by video call, in person when the project justifies giving up the day. | Borough and neighbourhood pages rather than one page aimed at “London”, which is competing against every firm in the city at once. |
| Everywhere else in England Midlands, the North, the South West | Remote start to finish, on a call, a private preview link and email. No site visits. A build runs perfectly well without ever meeting in person. | The same structure, but you supply the photographs or budget for a photographer near you, because I will not be there to take them. |
Prices do not move with distance. A single page is from £495, a multi Search groundwork is included in every build rather than billed monthly.
By area
The places I write about in detail.
Each of these covers what the local market actually looks like, who I tend to build for there, and what ranking in that particular place takes. They are honest about where the competition is hard.
01
Web design Brighton
A billion-pound digital sector and twelve thousand digital jobs, which makes it the hardest market in the South East to stand out in on looks alone.
02
Web design Sussex
East and West Sussex, coast to Downs. Outside Brighton the competition thins out fast, which makes the search work quicker to win.
03
Web design Surrey
An affluent, sceptical market that reads the whole page before it calls. Published prices and a real process convert better here than anywhere.
04
Web design London
Not one market, and treating it as one is why most sites fail here. Borough level beats city level, and it is not close.
05
Web design Crawley
Manor Royal and the Gatwick Diamond make this a business-to-business town with a consumer town attached. Most local sites are built for the wrong one.
06
Web design Guildford
Three thousand developers and a research park on the doorstep. Build quality is visible here in a way it is not in most towns.
Read this before you enquire
When this is not for you
Distance is not a good reason to rule me out. These are.
- You want to walk into an office and sit down with a team. I work remotely, and the whole process runs on calls, email and shared drafts. If you would rather point at a screen in the same room, a local studio suits you better.
- You want a site that copies your biggest competitor. Looking like the market leader is how you end up invisible standing next to them. If the brief is a clone of somebody else's site, I am the wrong person to ask.
- You need someone who can be on site quickly. There is no office and no drop-in. Meetings happen on a call, or in Kent, Sussex or London by arrangement, usually a week or two out.
- You need cover while I am away. One person means one holiday, one bout of flu, and a limited number of builds running at a time. If your business needs a support rota with a guaranteed response time, an agency is the better buy.
- You want the phone ringing within a fortnight. A single page can be live in days, but the search work is measured in months. If next week is the deadline, spend the money on Google Ads instead.
What people actually search
Straight answers to the local questions.
No. The whole process runs on a kick-off call, a private preview link and email. Being nearby is genuinely useful for photography and for meeting face to face, and if you are in Kent, Sussex or London that is easy. It makes no difference to how the site performs.
That is mostly Google Business Profile work rather than website work, and it is the first thing I fix. Correct primary category, real service list, service area set properly, photos, and a steady trickle of reviews. Then a real page on your site for each town you actually cover. It is not fast, but it is the thing that works.
Yes, though everything is priced in pounds and written for a UK audience. If you are elsewhere and the timezone gap is workable, get in touch and I will be honest about whether I am the right person.