Web Design Chesham

Chesham sits in an interesting position. Close enough to London that many residents commute, but far enough into the Chilterns that it retains the character of a proper market town. The high street has independents mixed with chains. The business community is a blend of traditional trades, professional services, and newer ventures serving both locals and the wider Amersham and Rickmansworth area.

This creates a particular challenge for local businesses trying to get found online.

You're not just competing with other Chesham businesses. You're competing with companies in surrounding towns who also serve this area. Search "accountant near me" from Chesham and you'll see results from Amersham, Berkhamsted, even High Wycombe. The same goes for trades, solicitors, physiotherapists, and almost every other service.

To win those searches, your website needs to perform. Not just exist but actually perform. And the uncomfortable truth is that most local business websites don't.

The Problem With Most Chesham Websites

Spend an hour looking at websites for Chesham businesses and patterns emerge quickly. Heavy pages that take five or six seconds to load. Cookie-cutter designs that blur together. WordPress installations running on shared hosting with a dozen plugins fighting for resources.

These sites exist, but they don't compete.

When Google decides which results to show for "web design Chesham" or "plumber Chesham" or any other local search, it's weighing hundreds of factors. Site speed, mobile experience, content quality, technical structure, user engagement. A slow WordPress site with a bought theme ticks very few of those boxes.

The businesses ranking well locally aren't necessarily bigger or better known. They simply have websites that perform better technically. That's an advantage anyone can have—if they build their site properly.

Why I Stopped Using WordPress

I used to build WordPress sites. It's what most web designers do because it's quick to set up and clients have heard of it. Install a theme, configure some plugins, add the content, invoice, move on.

But I kept seeing the same problems.

Sites would slow down over time as plugins accumulated. Security vulnerabilities would emerge, requiring constant updates. Clients would call frustrated because their site was hacked, or broken after an update, or suddenly running even slower than before.

WordPress is a content management system designed for blogs that evolved into a general-purpose website platform. That flexibility comes at a cost. The codebase is enormous. Themes include features for every possible use case, whether you need them or not. Plugins run code on every page load, regardless of relevance.

For a small business website, it's massive overkill. You're shipping a cargo container when a van would do.

So I stopped. Now I hand-code every site from scratch. It takes more skill and more time, but the results aren't even comparable.

What Hand-Coded Actually Means

When I say hand-coded, I mean exactly that. I open a blank file and write code line by line. There's no theme underneath. No page builder generating markup. No database storing content that needs to be retrieved on every visit.

The result is a static website with pages that exist as complete files on the server, ready to be sent to visitors instantly.

This approach has been around since the beginning of the web, but it fell out of fashion as content management systems made updates easier. The tradeoff was performance. Static sites are dramatically faster than database-driven sites because there's nothing to compute. The page is already built.

For small business websites that don't change daily, this tradeoff makes no sense. You're sacrificing speed, security, and simplicity for flexibility you don't need.

Speed as a Competitive Advantage

Google has been explicit about this: page speed matters for rankings. Their Core Web Vitals framework measures loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. Sites that score poorly get pushed down in results.

More importantly, speed affects whether visitors stay or leave.

Research from Google found that 53% of mobile users abandon sites taking longer than three seconds to load. Amazon calculated that every 100 milliseconds of latency cost them 1% in sales. The data is consistent: faster sites convert better.

My Chesham web design projects consistently score 90+ on Google PageSpeed Insights. Most WordPress sites I test, including those built by agencies charging premium rates, score between 40 and 60. Some are worse.

That's not a marginal difference. It's the difference between a site that works and a site that haemorrhages visitors.

For a local business, this matters enormously. Someone searching for a service in Chesham has options. If your site loads slowly on their phone while they're walking down the high street, they'll tap back and try the next result. You'll never know they existed.

Security Without the Maintenance Burden

WordPress security is an ongoing battle. The platform powers over 40% of websites globally, making it the primary target for automated attacks. Hackers scan for known vulnerabilities in themes and plugins constantly. When they find one, they exploit it at scale.

Keeping a WordPress site secure requires regular updates. Core updates, theme updates, plugin updates—miss one and you're potentially exposed. Even with updates, compatibility issues can break functionality. Many site owners neglect maintenance because it's tedious and technical, leaving their sites vulnerable.

Static hand-coded sites don't have this problem.

There's no admin login to brute force. No database storing credentials or customer data. No third-party plugin code with unknown vulnerabilities. The attack vectors that make WordPress sites targets don't exist.

I've never had a hand-coded site compromised. WordPress sites I built years ago, before I switched approaches, got hacked regularly despite security plugins and careful maintenance.

For business owners who want to focus on their actual work rather than website babysitting, this difference is significant.

Mobile-First for a Mobile-First Town

Chesham's Metropolitan line connection means plenty of residents spend time on trains, phones in hand. Local searches happen on mobile devices constantly, finding somewhere for lunch, checking opening hours, looking up a tradesperson's number.

Google indexes mobile versions of sites first. If your mobile experience is poor, your rankings suffer regardless of how your site looks on desktop.

Hand-coded sites are built mobile-first by nature. I design for the smallest screen first, then expand the layout for tablets and desktops. Every element is considered for thumb navigation. Loading performance is optimised for mobile connections.

WordPress themes typically work the other way around, desktop designs squeezed down for mobile, often with compromises. Buttons too small to tap accurately. Text too small to read without zooming. Layouts that technically work but feel clunky.

The difference is obvious when you use both types of sites on your phone. One feels native to the device. The other feels like you're viewing a desktop site through a small window.

What This Means for Local Rankings

Local SEO has specific requirements beyond general search optimisation. Google weighs proximity, relevance, and prominence when deciding which businesses to show for location-based queries.

You can't control proximity as your business is where it is. Relevance comes from content that matches what people search for. Prominence is influenced by reviews, citations, backlinks, and your website's technical quality.

A hand-coded website gives you advantages in relevance and prominence. Clean code structure helps Google understand your content. Fast loading contributes to positive user signals. Mobile-friendly design satisfies their requirements. Proper schema markup helps them categorise your business correctly.

When I build web design Chesham projects, I include local SEO foundations: Google Business Profile optimisation, location-relevant content, schema for local businesses, and technical setup that supports local rankings.

This isn't about tricks or gaming the system. It's about building a technically sound website that gives Google clear signals about what you do and where you do it.

The True Cost of Cheap Websites

Budget web design has hidden costs that become apparent over time.

A £500 WordPress site needs hosting which will cost £100/year or more for anything decent. It needs security monitoring and updates—either your time or paying someone. It needs plugin licenses renewed annually. When something breaks, you're paying for fixes.

Slow loading costs you visitors you never see. Poor rankings cost you customers who find competitors instead. Security breaches cost you data, reputation, and cleanup expenses.

My model is £150/month with nothing upfront. That covers design, development, hosting, security, updates, and unlimited content changes. There are no surprise costs because everything is included.

Over three years, you'll pay £5,400. For that, you get a hand-coded site that performs better than agency builds costing twice as much, plus ongoing support throughout.

The minimum term is 12 months. After that, you can cancel anytime but your site comes down at the end of the month.

Businesses I Work With in Chesham

The Chesham economy is diverse. Manufacturing heritage, strong trades sector, professional services serving both local residents and London commuters, retail and hospitality on the high street.

I've built websites for:

Tradespeople covering Chesham and surrounding villages from electricians, plumbers, builders, landscapers. For trades, the website needs to establish credibility quickly and make contact effortless.

Professional services like accountants, solicitors, and consultants. Often serving clients across the Chilterns rather than just Chesham, so the website needs to rank for multiple local terms.

Health and wellness practitioners such as physiotherapists, counsellors, personal trainers. Booking enquiries typically come from mobile searches, making speed and mobile experience critical.

Retail and hospitality on the high street and in surrounding areas. These businesses need to appear in local searches and often benefit from Google Business Profile integration.

Each of these has different requirements, but the fundamentals are the same: a fast, professional website that ranks well and converts visitors into customers.

Working With Me

I'm a web designer in Chesham offering hand-coded websites exclusively. No WordPress or templates.

Everything is handled remotely with email or a phone call when useful. You deal directly with me throughout. I design your site, write your content, build the code, and handle support after launch.

Content writing is included. I research what your potential customers search for and write copy that targets those terms while reading naturally. You don't need to provide anything beyond information about your business.

The timeline is typically two to three weeks from starting to launch, depending on how quickly you can provide feedback on designs.

After launch, your monthly fee covers unlimited content edits. Changing text, updating images, adding information, just ask and it's handled, usually within a day or two.

The Bottom Line

If you're looking for web design in Chesham, you have options. Agencies will quote you thousands for WordPress builds. Freelancers will offer cheap template sites. DIY builders will let you drag and drop something together yourself.

Or you can have a website that's actually built properly.

Hand-coded. Fast. Secure. Optimised for the local searches that matter to your business. Written by someone who understands what makes websites rank and convert.

£150/month, nothing upfront, everything included.

Get in touch to discuss your project. This would be a conversation about what you need and whether I can help.