SEO & web design · West Sussex
West Sussex, from the Gatwick corridor to Chichester Harbour.
One county containing an airport economy, a cathedral city, a financial back-office town and a lot of horticulture. Treating it as one market is why most local marketing here underperforms.
Werehouse Media is a Sussex-based one-person web design and SEO practice covering West Sussex: Chichester, Horsham, Crawley, Worthing, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill, East Grinstead, Bognor Regis, Littlehampton, Shoreham-by-Sea, Arundel, Midhurst and the villages between them. The same person does the design, the copy, the build, the search work and the systems behind it. Websites start at £995, multi-page builds from £1,495, redesigns from £1,495, a one-off SEO audit and fix list is £495, and local SEO runs from £695 a month. West Sussex is not one market: the Gatwick and Manor Royal corridor around Crawley is a dense business-to-business and logistics economy, Horsham and Haywards Heath are professional-services commuter towns, Worthing carries a financial and insurance back-office cluster, and Chichester, Arundel and the harbour villages run on tourism, marine trades and independent retail. Search competition and the right kind of website differ sharply between them, and the county-level term for search work is markedly less contested than the equivalent web design term.
The market here
Four economies, one county boundary.
Crawley, Manor Royal and the Gatwick corridor is the most business-to-business market in Sussex and behaves nothing like the rest of it. Manor Royal alone holds several hundred companies in logistics, aviation services, engineering, facilities management and distribution. The buyers there are procurement and operations people rather than consumers, the sales cycle is longer, and a website's job is to survive a shortlist rather than to catch an impulse. It is also the part of Sussex where the systems work sells most easily, because a firm running fifteen vans or a warehouse already knows exactly which spreadsheet is costing it money. There is a dedicated Crawley and Gatwick Diamond page.
Horsham, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill and East Grinstead are professional commuter towns with an unusual density of solicitors, accountants, financial advisers, surveyors and consultancies serving both local and London clients. These are the West Sussex businesses most likely to already have a site and least likely to be found, established firms whose reputation travels by referral and whose search visibility is close to zero. The honest first purchase here is nearly always search rather than a rebuild, which is the argument the SEO page makes at length.
Worthing and the Adur coast carry a financial services and insurance back-office cluster alongside a large independent trade and retail base, plus a good deal of care and domiciliary services. Shoreham and Lancing add marine and light industrial. The coastal seasonality is real but far gentler than East Sussex, because the economy is not primarily visitor-led.
Chichester, Arundel, Bognor, Littlehampton and the harbour is the most visitor-dependent part of the county, with marine trades, hospitality, festivals, Goodwood and a strong independent retail and gallery scene. Horticulture and glasshouse growing sit behind it around Runcton and Tangmere. The search characteristics here resemble coastal East Sussex more than they resemble Crawley: light competition, sharp seasonality, and a lot of businesses whose photography is far better than their website makes it look.
Who I work with in West Sussex
Four kinds of business, four different jobs.
01
Business-to-business and logistics
Manor Royal, Gatwick, Burgess Hill and the industrial estates.
A site that survives a procurement shortlist: clear capability, real evidence, accessible, and a credentials answer ready. See the capabilities page for what larger buyers ask for.
02
Professional firms
Solicitors, accountants, financial advisers and surveyors across the mid-Sussex towns.
Established, referral-fed and close to invisible in search. The entry point is nearly always SEO rather than a rebuild. See solicitors and accountants.
03
Trades and home services
Worthing, Littlehampton, Horsham and the coastal strip.
A page per service and per town, the right Google category, and a phone that gets answered when everyone is on a job. The full version is on the trades page.
04
Tourism, marine and independent retail
Chichester, Arundel, the harbour and the Bognor coast.
Photography given room to work, booking and enquiry routes that cope with a festival weekend, and content published months ahead of the season rather than during it.
The search reality
What ranking in West Sussex actually takes
| Factor | How it works in West Sussex | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Competition level | Moderate and uneven. Crawley and Horsham are more contested than the coast; Chichester, Arundel and Littlehampton are comparatively open. | Pick the term to the town. County-level search terms here are softer than the town-level ones in the north of the county. |
| Buyer type | Genuinely mixed. Manor Royal is business-to-business procurement; the coast is consumer and visitor. | These need different sites. A B2B capability site and a seasonal consumer site share almost nothing but a colour palette. |
| Gatwick effect | A large cluster of firms whose customers are other firms, many of them nationally. | Do not scope these to the town. A Manor Royal engineering firm is competing nationally and its search strategy should say so. |
| Google Business Profile | Better maintained than in East Sussex, but still the fastest win for most local firms. | Correct primary category, honest service area, real photographs, and a routine for asking for reviews after every job. |
| Seasonality | Real around Chichester and Bognor, mild in Horsham and Crawley. | Time the work to the market, not to the county. The north of the county runs on a business calendar, the south on a visitor one. |
On the search side specifically: "seo west sussex" is a genuinely winnable county-level term, and it is easier than the equivalent town-level terms in the north of the county. For a firm covering several West Sussex towns, the county term is usually the more efficient first target.
What it costs
Published, and the same everywhere.
Every project is quoted in writing before anything starts. No hourly meter, no surprise invoice, and the price does not change with your postcode.
- Website build, from £995. A focused site for a business that genuinely needs one page done well.
- Multi-page build, £1,495 upwards. Where most projects here land, with the timeline agreed at quote stage.
- Website redesign, from £1,495. An existing site rebuilt without losing the rankings it already earned.
- SEO audit and fix list, £495. A one-off diagnosis of what is holding an existing site back, credited against a build if one turns out to be the answer.
- Local SEO, from £695 a month. Google Business Profile, town and service pages, citations and reviews, worked continuously.
- Full search programme, from £995 a month. Content, technical work, earned links and AI search visibility together.
- Systems and automation. Process audit £495, single automations from £650, connected systems from £1,950, bespoke CRM builds from £4,500.
- Brand kits from £895. Website care from £49 a month, no contract.
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.
West Sussex questions
Straight answers.
All of them: Chichester, Crawley, Horsham, Worthing, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill, East Grinstead, Bognor Regis, Littlehampton, Shoreham-by-Sea, Arundel, Midhurst, Petworth, Steyning, Storrington, Selsey and the villages between. The practice is based in East Sussex, so mid-Sussex and the Crawley corridor are easy to reach in person; further west towards Chichester the work runs on calls and preview links, which makes no difference to the result.
Substantially, yes. Manor Royal and the Gatwick Diamond form the densest business-to-business cluster in Sussex, with several hundred firms in logistics, aviation services, engineering and facilities management. Those buyers behave like procurement rather than like consumers: longer cycles, shortlists, and questions about accessibility, security and continuity that a consumer site never faces. There is a separate Crawley page because it genuinely needs one.
With an audit rather than a rebuild, in almost every case. That is the most common situation among Horsham, Haywards Heath and Chichester professional firms: twenty years of reputation, a perfectly serviceable website, and no search visibility at all. A £495 audit tells you whether the site is the problem or whether the problem is that nothing on it targets anything anyone searches for. It is credited against a build if a rebuild does turn out to be the answer.
No. Prices are published and identical everywhere: websites from £995, multi-page from £1,495, redesigns from £1,495, SEO audit £495, local SEO from £695 a month. Location changes travel time, not the work, and travel time is not on the invoice.
Yes, and in the Gatwick corridor that is often the larger part of the job. Bespoke CRM builds, client portals, integration between systems that were never designed to talk, quoting and contract automation, and AI phone answering. It starts with a £495 process audit that establishes what is worth building and what should simply be bought.
Worth reading next
Written for business owners, not web designers.
Next step
Tell me what you sell in West Sussex.
You will get an honest answer, a fixed price, and no follow-up sequence pestering you for a fortnight.