Presence: a website that stops asking anything of you

A tradesperson, a practice or a shop has a website built once, often for three or four thousand euros. Two years later the opening hours are wrong, the photographs are dated, the technical foundation has not been updated, and nobody knows who has the password any more.

That is not negligence. It is that none of those tasks calls for a skill from your trade, and that you have a business to run.

Presence answers exactly that: you do not buy a new engagement every time a need comes up, your site is looked after continuously, and you know what you pay each month.

All three happen, and none of them sets off an alarm.

The site dates faster than people think

Not only visually. An abandoned offering still online, a price that is no longer right, a team member who left two years ago: the visitor does not think the site is old, they wonder whether the company still exists.

The technical side decays in silence

The software foundation moves, plugins age, security patches pile up, and speed drops a point a month. You discover it at the moment when bringing it back up to standard costs more than the upkeep you avoided.

The Google listing stays empty

It is the most expensive of the three, and the easiest to fix. When somebody searches for your trade near where they live, what appears at the top is not a website: it is a map with listings, their opening hours, their photographs and their reviews. A perfect site behind an empty listing is a hidden door.

A subscription that commits to nothing verifiable is a subscription people end up cancelling. Here is what actually happens.

Every month

• The hosting, the domain name and the certificate.
• Updates to the foundation and the plugins, applied on a test environment before production.
• Backups, with a restore that is actually tested. A backup never restored is not a backup, it is an assumption.
• Your content changes included: opening hours, text, photographs, prices. A message is enough, you do not have to learn the tool if you do not want to.
• Following the Google listing and the reviews, with help in replying, including to negative ones.
• A short report: what was done, and the figures that matter.

Every quarter

One improvement project, decided on the site’s figures and not on a hunch. A missing page, a journey to shorten, a season to prepare for.

Every year

A refresh of the design. That is what stops a site ageing ten years at once and having to be rebuilt.

Better to say it plainly than to slip it into the terms and conditions.

Why twenty-four months

It is the period below which this format produces nothing measurable. A site put live takes a few months to be known to search engines, the work on the listing and the reviews builds over quarters, and the first improvement project is only decided with real figures.

It is also what allows us to charge no set-up fee: the design is financed over the life of the subscription, instead of being paid up front, before you have even seen the site.

What you keep, whatever happens

The domain name, your content, your photographs and your access. The commitment covers the duration of the support, never the ownership of what was produced. At the end, you leave with the site.

What is not included

A complete rebuild, an online store, an application. Those are projects, not upkeep, and they are costed separately. We say so as soon as a request crosses the line, rather than refusing it at the end of the month.

An offering that suits everybody suits nobody. Here is where we are useful and where we are not.

Presence is for you if

• You run a shop, a practice or a trade business, and your customers are local.
• Your site mainly has to inspire trust and bring people in, not sell online.
• Nobody on your side has an hour a month to spend on a website, and that is normal.
• You prefer a predictable monthly line to a surprise invoice every three years.

It is not for you if

Your business rests on selling online: the catalogue, the stock and the orders call for a different setup. You need to change the site every week: the Partner plan is the one you want. Or your need is a one-off, framed piece of work, in which case it is the Project plan.

The most common case

An existing site, built a few years ago, that nobody looks after any more. We then start by looking at what is there: sometimes it can be repaired, often it is better to start cleanly, and we say so before committing you.

A small-business project rarely fails on the technical side. It fails because it is waiting for something the owner has no time to produce.

What we ask of you

• One hour of conversation at the start. What you sell, to whom, and what your customers tell you most often. That is where the copy comes from, and it is the only moment when your presence is essential.
• Your existing photographs, even unsorted, even imperfect. We sort and rework them. If they cannot be used, we give you an outline for taking some on a phone.
• Two short rounds of approval, on the site map then on the mockup.

What we do not ask of you

To write the copy. It is the point that most often stalls this kind of project: a supplier waiting for content, an owner with no time, and the project bogged down for months. We write it from the interview, you correct it.

To learn a tool. Editing is simple and we train you, but if you do not want to touch it, your changes are included in the subscription. A message is enough.

To choose the technology. That is our job, and yours is to tell us how you work.

The real calendar

Three to four weeks between the first conversation and the launch. One week of framing and gathering, one to two of design, one of review and launch.

What lengthens it is never the technical side: it is the availability of the photographs and the approval of the copy, which take your time while the business is running. So we plan reminders, because a project that waits three weeks for an approval has lost three weeks.