A northern web design studio · Manchester & the North West
Your website should be winning you work.
Fast, well-designed websites for small businesses across the North West, built to turn visitors into enquiries. Fixed prices, plain English, and you own everything.
Free 15-minute conversation · Personalised written review · No obligation
Sound familiar?
You know the website needs sorting. You just don’t know where to start.
Every week someone emails offering to fix your SEO, rebuild your site or put you top of Google. Meanwhile you’ve got a business to run, customers to look after, quotes to send, invoices to chase.
Here’s the truth nobody selling websites wants to say: you don’t need to understand web design. You need someone who understands your business, can point at three or four things that are costing you enquiries, and can put them right properly, affordably, without the jargon.
That’s what I do. And the first step is free.
Simple by design
How it works
Three steps. No obligation. You keep the report either way.
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Book a 15-minute conversation
A relaxed chat about your business, who you want to attract, and how customers find you now. I’ll have looked at your current site beforehand. No preparation needed.
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Receive your Website Review
A short, personalised report showing exactly what’s holding your site back: which fixes to start with, what they involve, and roughly what each would cost.
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Implement, only if you’d like help
Many people action the report themselves, and that’s great. If you’d like the site designed and built properly, we’ll agree a simple, fixed price. No pressure either way.
Your free review
What’s inside your free Website Review
Not a sales brochure, a genuinely useful document you can act on yourself, written specifically for your website after our conversation.
What’s costing you enquiries
The three to five things on your current site that most get in the way of someone picking up the phone, ranked by how much difference fixing them would make.
Speed and mobile scores
How fast your site actually loads on a phone on 4G, what’s slowing it down, and what a realistic target looks like.
How you compare locally
A look at two competitors ranking above you, what their sites do differently, and where the gap is genuinely worth closing.
Quick wins for this month
Two or three things you could fix in an afternoon without a rebuild, with plain-English instructions.
Rebuild or repair?
An honest answer on whether your site needs a tidy-up or a fresh start, with indicative costs for each route.
Accessibility & search basics
The accessibility and on-page issues most likely to be holding you back, written for owners rather than developers.
Real examples, not hype
What a good website actually does for businesses like yours
No buzzwords. No “digital transformation”. Just more of the right enquiries.
Found at the roadside
A joiner’s site loads in under a second on a phone, with a tap-to-call button already on screen. He wins the job because the other two sites were still loading.
Bookings taken at 11pm
A guest house takes the booking directly on its own site, at midnight, with no commission. The platform would have taken fifteen per cent of that stay.
The right kind of enquiry
An accountancy practice publishes indicative fees and who it works best with. Price shoppers stop ringing; advisory clients start.
How I can help
Practical services with fixed prices
Productised, clearly scoped and honestly priced, because “consultancy” shouldn’t be a scary word.
Free Website Review
Find out exactly why your website isn’t winning work, before you spend anything.
Website Design & Build
A fast, professional website that turns visitors into enquiries, built in weeks not months.
Ecommerce Websites
An online shop that’s quick to buy from and quick for you to run.
Local SEO & Google Visibility
Get found by the people searching for what you do, in the towns you actually serve.
Website Care Plan
Someone looking after your website every month, so it never quietly falls over.
All services →
Compare everything side by side, including what’s in each and typical timescales.
Who you’ll work with
One experienced person. Not an agency.
I’m James, a product leader with a background in enterprise software, digital design and web performance. I’ve spent my career making complicated technology useful for real teams, and now I build websites for small businesses across the North West.
When you work with Rainy Peaks, you work with me. The person on the first call is the person who designs your site, builds it, and answers the phone afterwards.
More about meWhat clients say
Trusted by small businesses across the North West
“The review alone was worth it, three fixes we did ourselves, and then we asked James to rebuild the whole thing. Enquiries have roughly doubled.”
“First person who explained web design without making me feel stupid. No jargon, no pressure, just practical answers about our actual business.”
“We were nervous about losing our Google rankings in a rebuild. James mapped every old page across, and traffic went up rather than down.”
Honest answers
Questions every owner asks
How much does a small business website cost?
A brochure site for a small business is typically a low four-figure fixed price; sites with online shops, booking systems or many location pages cost more. You get the full number up front, from a written scope, before anything starts. No day rates, no open-ended engagements, and no invoice at the end that’s bigger than the quote at the start. Hosting and care afterwards is a modest monthly cost, and you’re never tied into it.
How long does it take to build a website?
Three to six weeks is typical for a small business site, four to eight if there’s a shop attached. The honest bottleneck is usually content: photos, staff bios and product details coming back from your side. I’ll give you a short, specific list of what I need at kick-off so it doesn’t drift.
Do you use WordPress, Squarespace or something else?
Whatever genuinely suits you, not whatever I prefer to build. Most small business sites end up faster, cheaper to run and much safer as static sites with a simple editor on top. WordPress makes sense when you need a specific plugin or already have a team using it. Shopify is usually right for selling products. I’ll explain the trade-offs in plain English and you decide.
Will I be able to update the website myself?
Yes, and without ringing me first. You get an editor built for normal people, plus a recorded walkthrough for your team. Most clients handle their own text, photos and posts, and keep me for the bigger changes. If you’d rather not touch it at all, the care plan includes an hour of edits a month.
Will a new website lose our Google rankings?
Not if the migration is done properly, and protecting them is part of every rebuild. Existing URLs are mapped and redirected, page titles are carried across or improved, structured data is rebuilt, and I watch Search Console for the first month after launch to catch anything that slips. Rankings usually improve, because the new site is faster and better organised.
Ready to see what a better website could do for your business?
Book a free 15-minute conversation. You’ll get a personalised Website Review, whether or not we ever work together.
Free · 15 minutes · No obligation