Web design · Crawley
Web design in Crawley and the Gatwick Diamond.
Crawley is a business-to-business town with a consumer-facing town attached. Most websites here are built for the wrong one of those two.
Werehouse Media is a one-person, SEO-led web design studio working with Crawley and Gatwick Diamond businesses. The same person does the design, the copy, the build and the search work. Single-page sites start at £495, most multi-page builds land between £1,795 upwards, with the timeline agreed at quote stage, and standalone search work is sold as one-off projects rather than monthly retainers: an audit and fix list at £495, or local foundations at £995. Clients own the domain, the code and every account outright, with no lock-in. Crawley is unusual for a town of its size because Manor Royal, a 540-acre business district with more than 600 businesses and around 30,000 jobs, makes a large share of local demand business-to-business rather than consumer, which changes what the website has to do.
The market here
Manor Royal makes Crawley a B2B town, and most local sites ignore that.
Manor Royal is the largest business district in the Gatwick Diamond: roughly 540 acres, more than 600 businesses and something like 30,000 jobs, with Amazon, Nestlé, Virgin, Boeing, Siemens and Thales sitting alongside several hundred much smaller firms. Add the airport itself and its supply chain, and a very large share of commercial activity in Crawley is one business selling to another.
That has a direct consequence for websites here, and it is the thing most Crawley sites get wrong. A business-to-business buyer is not the same visitor as a homeowner. They arrive during working hours, often from a search for something quite specific, they are frequently comparing you against a procurement shortlist, and they want capability, accreditation, capacity and a straight answer on whether you can handle their volume. A site written in warm consumer language with a contact form and a photo of a smiling team does not answer any of that.
The consumer side of Crawley is real too, and it behaves normally: trades, home services, clinics and retail across Crawley, Horley, Horsham, East Grinstead, Redhill and the surrounding villages, where Google Business Profile and town-level pages decide who gets called. The point is that these are two different jobs, and a lot of local businesses are running one website trying to do both badly.
The other Crawley-specific factor is the airport. Aviation, logistics, freight, ground handling, hospitality and travel-adjacent services all cluster here, and they tend to compete on capability and compliance rather than on price or charm. Sites in that space need accreditations, certifications and operational detail visible rather than buried on an about page.
Who I build for in Crawley
Four kinds of business, four different jobs.
01
Manor Royal and B2B suppliers
Manufacturing, engineering, logistics, print, facilities, IT services.
Capability, capacity, accreditation and case detail front and centre. A page per service line so each one can rank on its own, and a contact route that suits a procurement enquiry rather than a homeowner.
02
Aviation, freight and travel-adjacent
Gatwick supply chain, ground services, logistics, transfers.
Certifications and compliance visible rather than buried, operational detail that a buyer can actually assess, and a site that loads on an airport connection.
03
Trades and home services
Crawley, Horley, Horsham, East Grinstead, Redhill, Reigate.
The standard local playbook, done properly: a page per service and per town, correct Google category, service area drawn to where the van actually goes.
04
Local retail, clinics and hospitality
County Mall, the neighbourhoods, and the surrounding villages.
Google Business Profile carrying the weight, opening hours and booking that work on a phone, and reviews requested as a matter of routine.
The search reality
What ranking in Crawley actually takes
| Factor | How it works in Crawley | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Audience split | Crawley demand divides into business-to-business, largely Manor Royal and Gatwick, and ordinary consumer local search. | Decide which one the site is for and structure it for that. Trying to serve both with one set of pages is why so many local sites convert poorly. |
| B2B search behaviour | Specific, capability-led queries during working hours, often as part of a comparison against a shortlist. | A page per service line with real operational detail, accreditations visible, and no requirement to ring to find out whether you do the thing at all. |
| Competition level | Light to moderate. Many Crawley firms, particularly on the industrial estates, have dated or barely-maintained websites. | A genuinely well-structured site is often enough to move ahead of long-established competitors here. |
| Surrounding towns | Crawley businesses typically also serve Horley, Horsham, East Grinstead, Redhill and Reigate. | A real page for each town actually covered, written specifically, rather than one page listing them all. |
What it costs
Prices do not change with your postcode.
Every project is quoted in writing before anything starts. There is no hourly meter and no surprise invoice at the end.
- Single-page site, from £495. Usually a placeholder for something bigger later, or a business that genuinely only needs one page.
- Multi-page build, £1,795 upwards. Most Crawley projects land here. Timeline agreed at quote stage, unlimited revisions between the first and final draft.
- Complex builds with custom animation, five figures. Longer timeline, quoted properly.
- Search and AI visibility audit, on application. A one-off look at what is holding an existing site back on Google and in AI answers, with a prioritised list.
- Local SEO foundations, £995. One-off project: Google Business Profile, town and service pages, technical fixes.
- Search groundwork, included in every build. Technical SEO, structured data, fast pages and a properly configured Google Business Profile, done once and done right rather than billed monthly.
- Brand kits from £895. Automation priced on application. Website care from £49 a month.
A third books the work, a third on the first draft, the balance before launch. Every build includes thirty days of post-launch fixes and reasonable tweaks.
Read this before you enquire
When I am not the right choice
Being outside Crawley is not a good reason to rule me out. These are.
- You need a team with cover. One person means one holiday, one bout of flu and a limited number of builds at a time. If you need a guaranteed response time, buy an agency.
- You want a stripped-down version of a bigger build. There is a proper single-page site from £495 and I will point you at it when it fits. I will not quote a thinned-out multi-page build that does half of each job.
- You want the phone ringing within a fortnight. A page can be live in days, but search work is measured in months. If next week is the deadline, spend the money on Google Ads.
- You want to sit in an office and point at a screen. The process runs on calls, email and shared drafts, with meetings in person by arrangement.
Crawley questions
Straight answers.
Yes, and it is the part of Crawley I would most want to work in. Manor Royal has hundreds of established firms, a lot of them with websites that have not been touched in years, competing for specific business-to-business searches that are far less contested than consumer terms. That combination is unusually good value.
Meaningfully, yes. A business buyer wants capability, capacity, accreditation and a straight answer on whether you handle their volume, and they usually arrive from a specific search during working hours while comparing you against a shortlist. Warm consumer copy and a contact form does not answer any of that.
Horley, Horsham, East Grinstead, Redhill, Reigate, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and the villages between, plus the rest of Sussex and Surrey. The work runs remotely, and Crawley sits close enough to the Brighton and mid-Sussex corridor that meeting in person is easy.
Lighter than you would expect for a town of this size, particularly on the business-to-business side. A lot of established local firms rely on reputation and repeat work and have let their websites go, which leaves room for anyone willing to do the fundamentals properly.
Worth reading next
Written for business owners, not web designers.
Next step
Tell me what you sell in Crawley.
You will get an honest answer, a fixed price, and no follow-up sequence pestering you for a fortnight.