A different kind of reader

Someone running a trade or local service business reads this site between jobs. They are usually the person who quotes the work, does the work, and answers the phone when it rings, and they came here with one question. That changes how every page is written: the practical answer comes first, the reasoning behind it comes second, and where a rule comes from a scheme or a regulator, that body is named as well.

An office reader might work through several related pages in one sitting and expect a page to survey the topic around a question. A trade reader wants the question in front of them answered on the page they landed on, with anything outside that question left for a different page. That is the standard every page here is held to.

What the practice builds

The practice builds what it calls a Living Site: a website built for a trade or local service business, with the content kept current for as long as the site stays with the practice. The build itself is a single piece of work. Keeping the site current afterwards runs as a separate, optional monthly arrangement, and it can be cancelled at any time.

The practice looks after sites it has built itself. At present, it does not take on sites built elsewhere.

Someone reading about a website from a desk in an office has the time to read it there. Someone running a plumbing, electrical, building or landscaping business is more often reading it between jobs, on a phone, with a customer waiting or a van to move. That changes what a page needs to give them.

The consequence comes before the explanation

Every page on this site states what a fact means for the business first, and gives the reasoning behind it second. A reader checking whether a scheme number matches, or whether a set of job photographs is doing its job, needs that answer at the top of the page.

No prior knowledge of websites is assumed

Running a trade business does not require knowing what a content management system is, how a search listing gets built, or what a domain name actually controls. Those terms appear here only where the point cannot be made without them, and each one is explained the first time it comes up. Trade terms, by contrast, are used the way the reader already uses them.

Each page stands on its own

A reader arriving at one page of this site is usually looking for the answer to one question. Where a related point belongs on a different page, it is named rather than folded in, so the page in front of the reader stays complete on its own terms and does not send them looking elsewhere for the part it left out.

The practice builds websites for people running trade and local service businesses: plumbers, electricians, heating engineers, builders, roofers, joiners, decorators, tilers, landscapers, locksmiths and cleaners among them. Each site carries the pages a customer checks before booking a job: the areas covered, the trades offered, the scheme registrations held, and photographs of the work itself.

Alongside the build there's an ongoing option called the Living Site, described in full at webdesign.uk. It keeps parts of the site current for as long as the site stays hosted with the practice, such as the areas covered and the job photographs on show, without the owner having to open the site and edit it themselves.

Who the Living Site is for

The Living Site is built for sites the practice has built itself. At present, the practice does not take on sites built elsewhere.