How we build websites

A site that looks beautiful but loads in eight seconds is a failure. A site that loads in one but keeps falling over at midnight is a different kind of failure. Below is the nine-step build process we use on every project.

1. Planning your website build
   Build planning starts with a tech specification written in plain English. We agree the platform, the integrations, the hosting, the email setup, the third-party tools, the analytics stack, the security posture, the backup approach, and the handover plan. Everything is signed off before a single line of code is written.
2. Choosing the right platform
   A site map isn’t just for search engines. It’s for the person trying to find the contact form on a Tuesday evening on a phone with three percent battery. We plan the structure of your site around the journeys that matter, then test the plan against your stakeholders before any design starts. If you’ve got an existing site, we use the analytics and the search data to back the structure with evidence rather than opinion.
3. Custom development with SEO best practices
   Custom doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel. It means writing only what the site needs, with the technical SEO basics built into the templates. Clean URLs, sensible hierarchy, schema mark-up baked in, sitemap generation that doesn’t fall over, canonicals handled properly, and structured data that matches the page content.
4. Speed and performance optimisation
   Core Web Vitals are not a fashion. They’re a measurable threshold, and they’re a ranking factor. Every site we build hits green on Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift and Interaction to Next Paint at launch, and we run automated checks weekly afterwards. Image compression, lazy loading, code splitting, sensible caching, no junk JavaScript.
5. Website security, built in
   Security isn’t a plugin. We harden every site at server level, application level and content level. WAF rules, rate limiting, brute-force protection, two-factor on every admin account, automatic patching for critical vulnerabilities, daily backups, off-site copies. We’ve never had a client site permanently lost to an attack, and we’ve been doing this for twenty-five years. We’d like to keep it that way.
6. SEO-ready from scratch
   Search engine optimisation is not a bolt-on. It’s how you build the site. Page speed, mobile-first markup, accessible HTML, schema mark-up, internal linking, image alt text, content hierarchy. Every one of those is a default in our build templates, so when an SEO consultant lands on your site they’ll find it already does most of what they’d ask for.
7. Content setup and page build
   This is where design and content meet code. We populate the live build with the agreed pages, set up the templates for content your team will publish over time, and make sure every page has the right meta data, structured data and internal linking. We don’t leave that for someone else to do later.
8. Testing and final checks
   We run a defined pre-launch checklist on every build. Cross-browser testing, real device testing, accessibility testing, performance testing, security testing, link checking, form testing, analytics validation. Nothing gets the green light without ticking every box.
9. CMS training and handover
   A site nobody on your team can edit is a site that goes stale fast. We hand over with a written manual, a recorded walkthrough, and a live training session for whoever will be looking after it. Then we stay on the line for the first ninety days while you settle in.