Presence: small business web design, SEO and AI search visibility

Presence covers every layer of how a UK small business gets found online and stays there: your website, your e-commerce store, SEO, AI search visibility, local search and hosting. It is the part of your business buyers see first, and the part that quietly decides whether they stay or leave. We build it to be fast, accessible and secure as standard, then help you stay visible as search changes.

We are a small business in Peterborough building this for other small businesses, so the trade-offs are familiar ones. This page is a map: a quick tour of what sits under Presence so you can find the bit you actually need.

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When people come to us about Presence

Most owners arrive with one of these, not a strategy deck:

Your site looks dated or loads slowly, and visitors leave before they read a word.
You are invisible in local search, because your Google Business Profile is incomplete or nobody is managing it.
You have a WordPress site that relies on someone staying on top of updates, patches and plugin hygiene, a maintenance burden you never signed up for.
You have no idea whether you show up in ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews when a buyer asks for the best service near them.

If one of those is the reason you are reading this, the relevant service line is below.

The Presence service lines

Each line below is its own page with the full detail. Here is what each one is for.

Websites & web apps

A modern, fast, accessible site that turns visitors into enquiries — built on a secure stack, not a plugin pile. Websites & web apps →

E-commerce stores

A Shopify or marketplace store built to sell, built to last, and migrated cleanly if you are moving from somewhere else. E-commerce stores →

SEO — technical & on-page

Be found in Google when buyers search for what you sell, with the technical health and on-page relevance to back it up. SEO →

GEO / AI search visibility

Get your business cited in AI answers — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — when someone asks for a recommendation. GEO / AI search visibility →

Local SEO / Google Business Profile

Show up on Google Search and Maps for "near me" searches, with a complete, well-managed Google Business Profile. Local SEO / Google Business Profile →

Hosting & care

Managed hosting that keeps your site fast, updated and backed up, so security is the default and not your problem. Hosting & care →

Migrate off WordPress

Move from a high-maintenance WordPress site onto a modern, secure build that does not need constant watching. Migrate off WordPress →

A note on AI search

AI referral traffic is still a small share of total referrals for most local businesses — but it is growing fast. According to Similarweb's 2025 generative AI report, AI platforms generated over 1.1 billion referral visits in June 2025, up 357% year on year. Early studies suggest that traffic also converts well: in one Seer Interactive B2B case study, referral traffic from ChatGPT converted at 15.9% and Perplexity at 10.5%, against 1.76% for Google organic on the same site — though AI was just 0.07% of that site's volume, so treat those figures as one case study found, not a universal rate.

The position is simple. The share is still small for local service businesses, but the window for being the business AI recommends is open now. We track where you appear across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and tell you what it means for you — something few small agencies do yet.

Built in as standard, not billed as extras

Every Presence build includes these from the start. They are not upsells.

Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA). Under the Equality Act 2010, service providers must make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and WCAG 2.2 AA is the standard the UK Government uses for accessibility and the recognised benchmark for the private sector. We target it as a minimum and publish an accessibility statement.
Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS). Fast loading, responsive interaction, stable layout — the metrics Google measures and buyers feel. We treat a sub-2.0-second LCP as a competitive target for 2026, drawn from industry analysis rather than an official Google threshold.
UK GDPR / PECR-compliant consent. Cookie and tracking consent done properly under UK rules, so analytics only load when a visitor agrees.
HTTPS / TLS. Encrypted by default on every page. The baseline for a trustworthy site, not a feature.

This is the difference between a site that merely launches and one that holds up. Awareness of the basics is still low: according to the UK Government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025, only 12% of UK businesses are aware of the NCSC's "10 Steps to Cyber Security" and just 3% hold Cyber Essentials certification.

Proof

Our position rests on the independent evidence cited above — Similarweb on AI referral growth, the Seer Interactive conversion case study, and the UK Government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 — applied to your site, with your own baseline measured before we change anything.

See the work we can talk about openly on our case studies.

How Presence connects

Three steps, and an ongoing layer rather than a one-off project.

Audit. We tell you what is holding your site back and where you do not appear — in search, in local results and in AI answers.
Build or fix. We build the site, fix the gaps, or migrate you onto a secure modern stack.
Maintain & grow. We keep it fast, secure and visible as search keeps changing.

The build is project work — our Custom rate is £60/hour, scoped with a proposal first. The ongoing maintain-and-grow layer sits inside the monthly plan. For a project quote, start a conversation.

This matters more than it used to. The UK Government's SME Digital Adoption Taskforce has set the ambition for the UK to be the most digitally capable and AI-confident country in the G7 by 2035, and according to the Government's Business Population Estimates 2025, that is against a base of 5.68 million SMEs, which make up 99.85% of UK businesses. A presence that is found and built well is now closer to a baseline than a nice-to-have.

Frequently asked questions

What is included in a new website build?

We work outcome-first, not deliverable-first. A build runs from discovery and brief, to site architecture, to the build itself on a staging site from day one (no black-box sprints), through a WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility audit and a Core Web Vitals pass, to launch with a runbook so you know how it all works. Ongoing content and SEO management are not part of the build — they live in the monthly plan. Project work is charged at our Custom £60/hour rate, scoped with a proposal first. As a rough market reference, Shopify's UK guidance puts typical agency e-commerce build costs well into the thousands; that is context, not our price.

How long does a website build take?

A realistic range is four to eight weeks for a small brochure or service site, and eight to sixteen weeks for an e-commerce build, depending on catalogue size and integrations. The biggest variable is how quickly you can get us content and feedback. We will not promise a specific deadline without a scoped proposal. A clear range beats a number we cannot stand behind.

Do I need to move away from WordPress?

Not necessarily. WordPress can be run securely with disciplined plugin hygiene, automatic updates and a managed host. The catch is the workload: Patchstack recorded 11,334 new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025, with 46% unpatched at disclosure and a weighted-median time to first exploit of five hours for the most heavily exploited flaws. If your site is plugin-heavy, out of date, or nobody is keeping on top of updates, that is a maintenance and security burden you should not have to carry. We do not build, host or maintain WordPress ourselves. What we offer is a clean migration onto a modern, secure build, and we will tell you whether that move is worth making for you.

What is SEO, and how long does it take to work?

SEO is making your site visible in Google and other search engines when buyers search for what you offer. It has two halves: technical health (can search engines crawl your site, is it fast, is it well structured) and on-page relevance (does your content match what people are searching for). Timeline: technical fixes can show improvement within weeks; building content authority for competitive terms usually takes several months. We will not promise specific rankings — that breaches Google's own guidance and UK fair-trading rules.

What is GEO or AI search visibility, and do I need it?

GEO — generative engine optimisation — means getting your business cited in AI-generated answers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini) when buyers ask questions. You cannot submit your site to these tools directly; you earn citations through strong SEO, clear brand and entity signals, and crawlable, well-structured pages. AI referral traffic is still a small share of total referrals, but studies suggest it converts well above Google organic — one Seer Interactive B2B case study recorded 15.9% for ChatGPT versus 1.76% for Google organic. Do you need it? Most local small businesses are not yet tracking where they appear in AI answers, so the early-mover window is open.

What is a Google Business Profile, and why does it matter?

Your Google Business Profile is the free Google listing that controls what shows up when someone searches your business name or "near me" on Google Search and Maps. Google states that businesses with complete, accurate information are more likely to show up in local search results, and it is a primary data source for local queries. It is also where reviews live: in BrightLocal's 2026 consumer research, 71% of consumers read reviews on Google before choosing a local business — though that is a US survey, so the UK trend may lag. An incomplete or unmanaged profile is one of the most common, and most easily fixed, Presence gaps. (Note: it is "Google Business Profile" now, not the retired "Google My Business".)

What does managed hosting mean, and why is shared hosting a risk?

We host the modern, secure sites we build — we do not host or maintain WordPress. Managed hosting means we handle the server updates, application and dependency updates, daily backups, malware scanning, uptime monitoring and SSL renewal for that stack. Shared hosting puts your site on a server with many others, and the provider rarely patches the application layer for you. As an illustration of why that layer matters, in controlled testing across five hosting environments, Patchstack found in August 2025 that WordPress exploits bypassed hosting providers' own security in 87.8% of cases before reaching an application-layer defence. Managed hosting is the baseline for a secure production site, not a premium extra.

Is my site legally required to be accessible?

For UK businesses, the Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments for disabled users (Part 3, Sections 20 and 29). WCAG 2.2 AA is the standard the UK Government uses for accessibility and the recognised benchmark for demonstrating reasonable adjustment in the private sector — not an absolute statutory test, and courts assess case by case. Every build we deliver targets WCAG 2.2 AA as a minimum and includes a published accessibility statement. If you sell to EU consumers, the European Accessibility Act has also applied since 28 June 2025 and covers e-commerce.

How do Core Web Vitals affect my Google rankings?

Core Web Vitals — LCP (load), INP (responsiveness to a click or tap) and CLS (layout stability) — are part of Google's page-experience signals and a direct conversion lever; they support rankings rather than override content and relevance. According to the HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025, only 48% of mobile sites currently pass all three. INP is the metric most service sites fail, and it is the first thing we audit on any existing site. Google's "good" LCP threshold is 2.5 seconds; we treat a sub-2.0-second LCP as a tougher competitive target for 2026, drawn from industry analysis rather than a confirmed Google policy.

Find out where you stand

Get a free Presence audit — we will tell you what is holding your site back and where you do not appear, in search and in AI answers. No obligation, and you will learn something useful before you spend a penny.

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Speak to us directly to hear what our current clients say.