Founder of The Web Alchemist. I design and build the websites myself, and I’m usually the one who picks up when you ring.
Seventeen years in web design. I work from Cinderford in the Forest of Dean.
The agency years
Nine years designing and building websites inside digital agencies across the South West. Long enough to see how the work gets priced, who does it, and where the money goes once a quote has been signed.
2018
Went it alone under The Web Alchemist name. Same work, without the account managers sitting between the client and the person building the site.
2026
Incorporated as TWA Marketing Ltd. The same year ThreeBestRated named us one of the top three website designers in Gloucester.
Now
There’s a team around me for SEO and Google Ads. I still plan, design and build the websites.
Most of my week is WordPress. I build in Impreza with WPBakery and Advanced Custom Fields, which means a design turns into a working site quickly and you can still edit it yourself without ringing me every time a price changes.
When a project needs something an off-the-shelf plugin can’t do, I write it. The price estimator on our homepage is one of mine. So is GSAP Animation Generator Pro, a plugin I sell to other developers through our downloads page. Some of the sites I’ve built recently are in our portfolio.
I also build for other agencies on a white-label basis, in Beaver Builder and Elementor as well as Impreza. That means I’ve seen an awful lot of other people’s websites from the inside, and most of what goes wrong with them is the same handful of things. Contact forms that quietly stop sending. Phone numbers buried three scrolls down on a mobile.
That’s where the guides on this site come from. They’re written for business owners who want to understand what they’re paying for, and I keep them up to date when Google or the rules change.
Plenty of clients are here in Gloucestershire. Others are in Brighton, Edinburgh, the USA and Australia, which works fine over a video call.
New articles go up most weeks. The longer guides sit underneath them, one for each part of running a business website.
Book half an hour. Bring the numbers if you have them. If it isn’t something I can fix, you’ll hear that on the call.
