Most small businesses in Saltaire and Shipley don't need a website. They need an online setup. There's a difference, and it's the difference between getting found and not.
A website on its own is a brochure. A proper online setup is a website plus the things that actually make the phone ring: a Google Business Profile, reviews, a way for people to book or pay you, photos that don't look like they were taken on a flip phone, and content you don't have to write yourself every Sunday night.
We've audited dozens of small businesses across BD17, BD18 and BD16. The average has a Facebook page, a half-finished Google listing, and no website. The ones that have all the pieces in place get five to ten times the enquiries of the ones that don't — same trade, same town, same prices.
The full list of what a local business actually needs
Not all of this on day one. But you'll need it within the first six months if you want to compete with the salon two doors down.
- A fast website on your own domain. Mobile-first, loads in under a second, makes it obvious what you do and how to contact you. A proper Saltaire website from £349. No templates that look like everyone else's.
- A complete Google Business Profile. The free Google listing that shows up in Maps. This is the single biggest thing standing between most local businesses and new customers. We cover the full setup in our Google Business Profile guide.
- A review system. Not begging. A small process — a printed card, a follow-up text, a QR code at the till — that turns happy customers into Google reviews without you having to remember.
- Real photos. Of your shop, your food, your team, your finished jobs. Not stock images. We do on-site photography shoots in Shipley for exactly this reason.
- Online booking or enquiries. Salons, clinics, restaurants, dog groomers, tradespeople — every one of these loses money to missed calls. A simple booking calendar wired into your site fixes most of it.
- A way to take payments online. Deposits, gift vouchers, full payments, subscriptions. Stripe-powered, sat behind your website, no extra logins.
- Secure hosting. Backups, SSL, monitoring, security headers. The boring stuff that means you don't wake up to a hacked site or an SEO penalty.
- Social content you don't have to write yourself. A monthly pack — captions, photos, carousels, reels — written for your business specifically. Not generic “Happy Monday” nonsense.
- A small brand kit. Logo, colours, fonts, an invoice template, a few story templates. So everything from your website to your van to your invoices looks like it belongs to the same business.
Why most of this gets skipped
Because the usual story is: a one-man-band web designer builds the website, a separate person sorts your photos, your nephew runs your Instagram for a month then stops, and nobody is responsible for the whole thing. Six months later you've paid four people, the website works but the booking link is broken, your Google profile says you're open Sundays when you aren't, and the last Instagram post was for Mother's Day.
We do the whole thing under one roof. One contact, one invoice, one team that owns whether your business is actually getting customers from the internet. That's the entire point.
What it costs
Not as much as people think. The website is from £349. A proper Google Business Profile setup runs a couple of hundred. A photography shoot is a one-off. Bookings and payments are wired in once and then they just work. Social content is monthly only if you want it.
For most Saltaire and Shipley businesses, the full kit lands somewhere between £600 and £1,200 to start, plus a small monthly amount for hosting and any ongoing content. Less than two months of one bad ad campaign.
How to start
Pick the one thing that's costing you the most right now. Missing calls? Bookings. No photos? Photography. Invisible on Google? Profile and reviews. No website? Start there. We'll tell you honestly which one to do first — even if that means we don't do it.
The whole point is that you're a real local business with a real team. The internet bit shouldn't be the thing that holds you back.