Web design in Stonehaven, close enough to Aberdeen to disappear into it.
Fifteen miles down the coast and under twenty minutes on the train. Near enough that plenty of Stonehaven businesses end up marketing themselves as Aberdeen ones, and then wonder why they are competing with the whole city.
Talk About Your Site →Being near a city is not the same as being in one.
A big city pulls search results toward itself. There are more businesses in it, more people searching from it and more sites that have been worked on for years, so a smaller town on its edge can find its own name is the only thing it reliably comes up for.
The instinct is to lean into Aberdeen, and it usually backfires. Writing the site as though you are a city business puts you in the hardest race there is locally, against firms who are physically closer to the customer and have been at it longer. The searches with Stonehaven in them are the ones where you start with an advantage, and they are frequently the ones nobody has bothered to claim.
None of that is a promise about where you would end up. Getting found is its own piece of work with its own pricing, on SEO. What a website decides is what happens when somebody does find you.
The people who live here and the people who came for the day.
A coastal town with a harbour and a castle on the doorstep gets both, and they behave nothing alike once they land on your website.
Residents and the Mearns
Stonehaven itself and the villages around it. This customer is comparing you with two or three others they have heard of, and is likely to use you again if it goes well.
Worth an enquiry form. They are not in a hurry.
Visitors and passing trade
People at the harbour or on their way to Dunnottar, deciding in the next few minutes, standing outside on a phone. They will not read a page to find your opening hours.
Worth a phone number and a photograph, immediately.
What a Stonehaven website has to get right.
- Puts Stonehaven where it counts, in titles and headings, because a website that quietly rebrands itself as an Aberdeen one gets judged against Aberdeen firms.
- Separates the local trade from the visitor trade, because somebody who lives here and somebody who is down at the harbour for the afternoon want different things from you.
- Names the Mearns villages you actually cover, so Portlethen, Newtonhill and Inverbervie are not left guessing.
- Works for somebody standing outside your door on a phone, which near the harbour is a normal way to be looking you up.
- Keeps the enquiry short, because a visitor deciding now will not fill in nine fields.
The general case is on web design in Aberdeen. If you sell products rather than take enquiries, start with ecommerce web design instead.
Round the city, not down the street.
We are in Westhill, so Stonehaven is a run round rather than a walk. We will make it.
No pretending to be local: you would work it out inside a minute and it would cost us the conversation. It also does not matter much. A call and a shared screen builds exactly the same website, and the meetings that genuinely help are usually the first one and the one at the end. Call 07577 796931 or send us the details.
Three fixed project prices, published in full, before you speak to anyone.
See Website Prices →What Stonehaven businesses ask first.
Are you in Stonehaven?
No, we are in Westhill, and Stonehaven is an easy enough run when meeting is useful. We are not going to claim a local office we do not have. Most of the work does not need one, and we would rather be straight about that from the start.
We are so close to Aberdeen. Should we just target Aberdeen instead?
You can, but you will be competing with every firm actually in the city, on their ground. The searches with your town in them are less contested and the people making them are nearer to you. For a lot of Stonehaven businesses the sensible answer is both, with the local one built properly first because it is the winnable one.
A lot of our custom is passing trade. Does a website change that?
It changes what happens after somebody has heard of you. Passing trade still checks opening times, looks at photographs and decides whether to bother, usually on a phone, usually within a few minutes of deciding. The website is not what brings them past the door, but it often decides whether they come through it.
What does it cost?
Three fixed project prices, all published, and none of them move because of your postcode. There is no travel charge either, which is worth saying out loud since being outside the city is usually where one gets added.
Are you selling to the town or to the city?
Worth settling before anything gets built, because it changes almost every page. Say which one you are after and we will come back with what we would do about it. If the site you have is already doing that job, we would rather tell you than sell you another one.
Talk About Your Site →Tell us what the site needs to do.
What you do, who you want more of, and what the current site does or does not do. That is enough for a useful first conversation.
- 07577 796931
- lee@westhillai.com
- Westhill, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire
We cover the whole area, not just here. See areas we cover for how that works, or who you would be dealing with.