Notes on strategy, brand and growth
Plain, practical writing on the work we do, web design, SEO, AI and paid media, for owners who'd rather understand the why than chase the latest tactic. One idea at a time, no jargon.
Nine principles for a website that earns its keep
Most websites read like a brochure. The best ones do a job. Here are the nine principles we apply to every build, and the thinking behind each one.
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Why your homepage hero is quietly losing you leads
We looked at 60 client heroes before and after a rebuild. The pattern was clear: vague headlines, buried calls to action and stock imagery, all costing leads.
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AI search changed the results page. How to get cited, not buried
Answer engines now resolve a third of commercial queries before anyone clicks. The brands doing well are the ones the models quote, and that's a position you can work towards.
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The Google Ads audit that found £8,200 a month in wasted spend
A real account, walked through line by line: broad-match leakage, location bloat and a conversion action counting newsletter sign-ups as sales. Here's the checklist we ran.
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We handed an AI agent our inbound leads for 90 days. Here's what happened
Response time fell from four hours to nine seconds, and qualified bookings rose 61%. The honest write-up, including the two weeks it went wrong.
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Positioning is the most important decision you'll make this year
Before you touch the website, the ads or the content calendar, answer one question honestly: why you, and not the obvious alternative? Here's a framework that works.
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How a small site outranked the giants on the queries that mattered
A client story in cluster building: 34 interlinked articles, one pillar page, and page-one rankings against sites with fifty times the backlinks.
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Stop measuring ROAS. Start measuring contribution margin
A 4x return on ad spend can still lose you money. We walk through the simple model that tells you what your ads actually earn after product costs, shipping and returns.
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The marketing stack we'd build if we started from scratch in 2026
Strip out the legacy tools and the picture gets simple: one data layer, three automation workflows, and people only where judgement earns its keep.
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