Website design for small businesses in Exeter

Exeter runs on a wider spread of business than almost anywhere else on this list: Georgian and Victorian terraces through the old central quarters need the same plumbers and electricians as the post-war estates on the outer ring, the university brings a rolling population of students and staff who search everything on a phone, and Marsh Barton trading estate is a working district of trades, wholesalers and light industry that rarely gets a website worth the name.

A cathedral city this size supports specialists that a smaller town cannot: solicitors, architects, independent retailers around the Quayside, and contractors who work across the whole of Devon from an Exeter base. Most of them are still running on a Facebook page or a site built a decade ago.

Exeter is competitive. More agencies, more contractors and more searches all land in the same EX1 to EX6 postcode range, so a generic template is easiest to lose here of anywhere on this list. A site needs to say clearly and immediately what the business does, where in the city or county it covers, and why someone should stop scrolling.

It also needs to work for two different kinds of visitor at once: someone searching from a phone outside the cathedral who wants an answer now, and someone doing proper research on a laptop before committing to a bigger job. Both need to land on a page that loads fast and says what they need in the first screen.

A city this size means real competition on the obvious search terms, which makes the basics matter more, not less: a proper title and description on every page, structured data that tells Google what the business actually is, and a fast mobile page. None of that promises a ranking, but skipping it makes losing out to a competitor who has done it far more likely.

Exeter also sits at the middle of the map for this whole area, close to Topsham, Exmouth, Crediton, Cullompton and Newton Abbot, so a city-based business serving the wider county needs its coverage area stated plainly rather than assumed.

Exeter's building stock spans four very different trade markets inside one city. The Georgian and Victorian terraces through the old central quarters need careful, period-appropriate repair work: sash windows, lime render, older wiring and plumbing that a generalist builder can get wrong. The post-war semis and estates on the outer ring are a completely different job, routine kitchen, bathroom and boiler work at higher volume and lower complexity.

Purpose-built student accommodation near the university is its own market again, fast-turnaround maintenance between tenancies rather than considered renovation, and the continuing new-build growth to the east around Cranbrook and Pinhoe is mostly snagging and warranty-period work rather than repair. A trade business that tries to speak to all four markets on one page usually ends up speaking clearly to none of them, so naming which part of the city, and which kind of housing, a business actually specialises in is worth more here than in a smaller, more uniform town.