Web design · Sussex
Web design across East and West Sussex.
Sussex is not Brighton. Outside the city the competition thins out fast, which makes the search work cheaper and quicker to win than most business owners here assume.
Werehouse Media is a one-person, SEO-led web design studio covering East and West Sussex, including Brighton, Hove, Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings, Lewes, Chichester, Horsham and Crawley. 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. Outside Brighton the competition for local search terms is markedly lighter than most Sussex business owners expect, which means a well-structured site and a properly configured Google Business Profile can move quickly.
The market here
The county splits into two search markets, and they behave nothing alike.
Brighton and Hove is a genuinely difficult market. It has one of the densest concentrations of digital and creative businesses in the country, and the obvious search terms are contested by firms who know what they are doing. If you are in the city, expect a longer campaign and read the Brighton page instead of this one.
The rest of Sussex is a different proposition entirely. In Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings, Horsham, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill, Chichester and the towns and villages between them, a great many businesses still have no website worth the name, a Google Business Profile nobody has touched since it was created, or a template site with a single services page listing nine things. The bar is low, and clearing it is not expensive.
That gap is the whole opportunity. A Sussex trade or local service business with a real page for each service, a real page for each town it covers, correct Google categories and a handful of recent reviews will frequently outrank competitors who have been established far longer. It is unglamorous work and it is reliably the highest return per pound available to a small business outside a major city.
The coastal towns have their own wrinkle: seasonality. Tourism, hospitality and anything trade-adjacent in Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings and Bognor swing hard through the year. Search demand moves months ahead of the season, so the content and the profile work needs to be in place well before the phone is supposed to ring.
Who I build for in Sussex
Four kinds of business, four different jobs.
01
Trades and home services
Heating, electrical, roofing, building, landscaping across both counties.
A page per service and per town, the right Google primary category, and a service area drawn properly. This is the single highest-return work available to a Sussex trade.
02
Tourism, hospitality and seasonal businesses
Coastal towns, the South Downs, holiday lets and venues.
Content and profile work in place months before the season, plus booking and enquiry routes that hold up when demand spikes.
03
Independent retail and makers
Lewes, Chichester, Arundel, Rye and the market towns.
A site that sells the thing properly, with photography given room to work and a shop that does not fall over on a phone.
04
Clinics and private practice
Dental, veterinary, physiotherapy, therapy and private healthcare.
A page per treatment, published prices where the regulator permits, and an enquiry route that respects how nervous the visitor often is.
The search reality
What ranking in Sussex actually takes
| Factor | How it works in Sussex | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Competition level | Sharply split. Brighton and Hove are hard. Most of the rest of East and West Sussex is genuinely open. | Outside the city, the basics done properly will usually do it. Inside it, expect a longer and more specific campaign. |
| Town coverage | Sussex businesses routinely serve eight or ten towns and have one page mentioning all of them in a list. | A real page for each town you genuinely cover, with content specific to it. Not the same page duplicated, which does more harm than good. |
| Google Business Profile | Frequently neglected across the county, which makes it the fastest win available. | Correct primary category, full service list, service area drawn to the towns you cover, twenty-plus photographs, and reviews requested after every job. |
| Seasonality | Coastal and tourism-linked demand swings hard through the year. | Publish and fix months ahead of the season. Search visibility built in March is what pays in July. |
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 Sussex 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 Sussex 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.
Sussex questions
Straight answers.
All of East and West Sussex: Brighton, Hove, Eastbourne, Worthing, Hastings, Bexhill, Lewes, Newhaven, Seaford, Crawley, Horsham, Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Chichester, Bognor Regis, Arundel, Littlehampton and the villages between them. The work runs remotely, and in-person meetings are straightforward in the Brighton and mid-Sussex corridor.
Considerably, outside the city. Brighton has an unusual density of digital firms competing for the same terms. In most of the rest of the county the competition is far lighter and the basics done properly go a long way. That is a real difference, not a sales line.
Only for the towns you genuinely work in and can write something specific about. Eight near-identical pages with the name swapped is the pattern Google treats as doorway pages, and it can pull down the whole site. Better to have four real pages than eight thin ones.
No, though it is easy enough in Brighton, Lewes, Haywards Heath and the mid-Sussex corridor. Further out, along the coast or west towards Chichester, the work runs on a call and a preview link, and it makes no difference to the result.
Worth reading next
Written for business owners, not web designers.
Next step
Tell me what you sell in Sussex.
You will get an honest answer, a fixed price, and no follow-up sequence pestering you for a fortnight.