Web design in Medway,
from the studio in
the middle of it.
More calls and enquiries from all five towns, a website that makes you look the part, and none of the technical side to worry about. I'm based in Gillingham, so Medway is home, not a place I had to research. From £100 a month with everything done for you (12-month minimum), or from £800 outright on Wix if you'd rather edit it yourself. Live in as little as two weeks.
Local knowledge
One district, five very different high streets
Medway gets treated as one place by everyone who does not live here, and as five distinct towns by everyone who does. Both readings matter for a business. Around 280,000 people live across Gillingham, Chatham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham, close enough together that customers cross between the towns without thinking about it, which means a Chatham garage genuinely is competing with a Gillingham one three minutes up the A2.
At the same time, the towns sell in different ways. Rochester trades on heritage and presentation, and a business there is judged on how it looks before anything else. Gillingham and Strood run on trades and services, where the phone number and the reviews decide the enquiry. Chatham carries the retail centre, the universities and most of the regeneration money. A website that treats all five as interchangeable is leaving something on the table in every one of them.
That is why I built a separate page for each town rather than one page with five names in the title. If you are in one of the five, your town's page below is the more useful read. If you serve the whole district, as most Medway trades and services do, this is the right place, and the answer is usually a site that names all five towns properly rather than hoping Google infers them.
The five towns
Pick your town, each has its own page
Written separately for each town, because the markets genuinely differ. Every page covers the local business mix, what works there, and what I keep having to fix.
Medway
Gillingham
My home town and the district's largest. Trades, salons, takeaways and a lot of sole traders.
Web design in Gillingham →
Medway
Chatham
The commercial centre: the Dockyard, the Pentagon, the universities and the fastest-changing high street.
Web design in Chatham →
Medway
Rochester
Heritage and independents, where looking the part from a phone screen does real commercial work.
Web design in Rochester →
Medway
Strood
The practical west bank of the river, with less browsing and more deciding.
Web design in Strood →
Medway
Rainham
Settled and residential, where reputation and reviews travel further than advertising.
Web design in Rainham →
What it costs
What a Medway website costs
One question decides it: do you want to edit the website yourself?
No, I'd rather it was done for me
Pay monthly, built on Astro
Get your site online for only £199
£99 setup and your first month, then from £100 a month. 12-month minimum. No VAT to add. SEO kept up every month.
About £3.29 a day for a site that is built properly and looked after. Bought outright, the same level of SEO starts at £1,100, before hosting or changes.
Get my site online for £199Services sites £100 or £200 a month, bookings or ecommerce £150 or £250. Up to 1 or 2 hours of changes a month, unused time does not roll over, bigger work quoted first. 12-month minimum.
Yes, I want to edit it myself
Buy outright on Wix
From £800
Bookings or ecommerce from £1,000. Wix hosting is paid to Wix, in your name, not marked up.
Get a fixed quote for a Wix siteNo VAT to add. Every plan and term on the pricing page →
Proof, not promises
160 five-star reviews, all public
Every one left by a real client on Google, Wix, Facebook or another public review site, where you can go and check it yourself. Nothing here is a quote I chose because it flattered me.
How I help
What I build for Medway businesses
The same services wherever you are in the Towns, priced by the project rather than the postcode.
Web Design
Custom designed, fast on phones, and built properly so customers can find you and call you.
Get your site online for only £199 →
£99 setup and your first month, then from £100 a month. 12-month minimum. Or from £800 outright on Wix.
Getting found on Google
Show up when local customers search for what you do, on Google and on Google Maps.
From £300 →
Worth knowing
What actually decides local search in Medway
The map results take most of the clicks for Medway searches
For "web designer medway", "plumber gillingham" or anything like them, the block of three businesses with a map sits above every ordinary result and takes the majority of the traffic. Position there depends on your Google Business Profile, its categories, its photos and above all its steady flow of Google reviews, more than on the website behind it. I have watched businesses ranked second in the ordinary results take almost no clicks because the map results above them took them all.
Naming the towns individually is what earns the district
Google does not treat Medway as a synonym for its five towns. A site that only ever says Medway ranks weakly in each town, and a site that only names its home town is invisible for the district-wide searches. The sites that win here do the boring thing properly: a clear list of the towns served, pages or sections that mean it, and consistent business details everywhere they appear.
Most Medway searches happen on a phone, mid-errand
The Towns are dense, urban and practical, and the typical local search is someone standing in the problem they want solved. A site that takes four seconds to load, hides its phone number, or saves its reviews for a page nobody visits loses that person to whoever made it easier, which locally is a competitor a few streets away.
Timings
How long a Medway project actually takes
The hero says as little as two weeks. This is where those weeks go, and which part of it moves.
Before the clock starts
Discovery & quote
A call, a look at your competitors, then a fixed price. The clock starts after you agree it.
2 to 4 weeks
Design & build
Where the whole of the two-to-four-week range sits. A brochure site lands at the short end, content-heavy and ecommerce builds at the long one.
Launch day
Launch
Testing, SEO checks, analytics and email, all done before the site is switched over.
After launch
Support
On a monthly plan, changes are done for you every month. On a Wix build, thirty days of support are included, then ask about ongoing support.
Questions
Medway questions I get asked
Which Medway towns do you cover?+
All five: Gillingham, Chatham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham, plus the areas between and around them, from Twydall and Wigmore out to Walderslade, Hempstead and the Hoo Peninsula. Each of the five towns has its own dedicated page on this site because each is a genuinely different market.
Are you actually based in Medway?+
Yes. My studio is in Gillingham, so Medway is home rather than a place name on a coverage list. I can meet anywhere in the Towns without it being an expedition, and I know the difference between a Rochester High Street audience and a Strood one because I live with both.
How much does a website cost in Medway?+
At WebOws Design in Gillingham, Kent, there are two ways. Get your site online for only £199: £99 setup and your first month, then from £100 a month. 12-month minimum. That covers a custom site built on Astro, hosting, SEO and small changes done for you. Or, if you want to edit it yourself, a Wix site bought outright from £800, with a fixed quote agreed before anything starts. No VAT to add either way. Sites can go live in as little as two weeks. Local SEO starts from £300. The price depends on the project, not which of the five towns you are in.
Should my own site target Medway or my specific town?+
Usually both, and they do different jobs. Naming your own town wins the searches from people nearest to you, and naming Medway catches the district-wide searches and the customers who think of the Towns as one place. What loses is naming neither and hoping Google works it out.
Can you get me into the Medway map pack?+
I can materially improve your chances. The map pack runs on your Google Business Profile more than your website: categories, photos, opening hours and a steady flow of Google reviews. I set the profile up properly and build the site to reinforce it, and the reviews part is then yours to keep feeding.
Quick quote
Tell me about the business. I'll confirm the right plan and when you could be live.
Usually within a working day. Or call 01634 984929 and speak to me directly.
Let's talk
Ready to be the
business Medway
actually finds?
Tell me what you do and which of the Towns you serve, and I'll tell you plainly what a site should cost and what it should do. No obligation, and no pitch dressed up as advice.