Small Tweaks

Category: Business Growth

  • Marketing and Technology: The Gap Costing You Customers

    Marketing and Technology: The Gap Costing You Customers

    I see it again and again, just how tightly marketing and technology are now bound together.

    You have marketers with a genuinely great eye, strong on design, strong on the creative side but who are just missing the technical skills to land it – and it shows. You can see there was a vision there, but the final result has flaws, because they couldn’t quite use the technology to implement what they’d pictured.

    So I felt a quiet nod of recognition reading Business Insider’s list of the most innovative marketing leaders of 2026. The piece argues that traditional marketing is now only a sliver of the job and that today’s best marketers are “part brand-builder, part data scientist… part AI wrangler.” One of them, Comcast’s marketing chief, put it plainly: marketing used to be one or two dimensional, and now you “increasingly have to become more of a technologist… to really drive the business.”

    I completely agree. The marketers who understand the link between marketing and technology can reach more people, to present a better image when they do reach them, and to make the whole customer experience more seamless. They can also turn it on themselves: working more efficiently, producing more, at higher quality.

    Which is all true at the top end of the market. But here’s the thing nobody in that article is talking about: what any of this means if you’re not a multinational organisation. If you’re a local trades company, an accountant, a two-person business doing good work that nobody can see.

    You don’t need to be seen seven times. You need to be seen once, and not blow it.

    Marketing people love to talk about touchpoints. The “rule of seven” is the idea that someone needs to come across you about seven times, across different platforms, before they’ll buy. It’s not wrong exactly, but it assumes something most businesses don’t have: enough reach for those seven encounters to even happen.

    For most businesses, the problem isn’t being seen seven times. It’s being seen at all, and then what happens in the few seconds after.

    Picture a local trades company or accountant. You search, you find them, you click the website and you’re taken back to the beginning of the internet. You’re not sure what they actually do for their customers, or how the process works, or whether you’d get a rough price before committing to anything. If you’re honest, you’re not even sure they’re still trading. And the site is harsh enough that you don’t feel comfortable making contact. It reminds you of someone sitting behind it who doesn’t really care about you.

    So you click away and go and find someone else.

    You end up contacting the company that gave you the most information upfront. The one that answered your questions and your worries before you’d even made contact. They felt modern, professional and inviting. They felt like they wanted your custom and would do whatever they could to help. The whole thing already felt simple, because you understood how it would work.

    The first business owner has no idea any of this happened. They don’t know they lost your attention, and your sale, because they never spent the time to stay current or think about their customer.

    And here’s the part that should sting a little: this should be an obvious, ongoing focus. The website and the customer experience should be constant considerations. But most haven’t touched anything in ten years. They don’t even need to commit to some relentless effort – even an occasional spruce-up and modernisation would transform how their customers feel about them.

    The fix is smaller than they fear and bigger than they think

    So what would I actually have them do?

    The bare minimum is to look at the website they already have and ask one honest question: how does this come across to a complete stranger? Then fix what’s broken and change whatever’s giving the wrong impression.

    In truth, most of these businesses do need a new site. But that doesn’t have to be expensive, especially set against how much they’re losing by leaving it as it is. A basic starter site is £550 and in the grand scheme of things, that’s an immediate leg up, not a luxury.

    That’s the visible half, but what actually happens when someone fills in your contact form? Do they get anything back? A bare email dropping into an inbox somewhere or a proper thank-you, maybe with a useful piece of content that starts answering their questions while they wait?

    What happens when someone messages you on Instagram or Facebook? Do they sit there for days, the message left unread, wondering if anyone’s home? Or does something reply within five minutes, letting them know they’ve been heard and pointing them to what they need?

    That gap matters more than it looks. Replying to an enquiry within five minutes instead of thirty makes you roughly a hundred times more likely to actually reach that person (MIT/InsideSales, 2007). When you’re busy doing the actual work, you can’t be that fast by hand. But technology can in the background, while you get on with the job. Setting that up is exactly the kind of automation we help businesses put in place.

    Not sure if this is you?

    If you’ve read this far and you’re wondering whether any of this applies to you, there’s a good chance that, deep down, you already know it does. The honest blockers are usually one of three: you’re not sure where to start, you’re worried about the cost, or you’ve never really believed this stuff was a priority.

    If that’s you, that’s exactly what a Digital Presence Assessment is for. It’s free. We look at where you stand and tell you where to focus. Where your time and effort will actually move the needle on being found online and turning that into enquiries. No big rebuild to begin with. Just an honest picture of where you’re losing people, and what to fix first.

  • Most web designers ask the wrong first question

    Most web designers ask the wrong first question

    For about a decade, I worked in technology, and a particular kind of phone call came in again and again. Someone would ring, having already worked out exactly what was wrong and exactly what I needed to do to fix it. “The service is slow and you need to sort out the servers.”

    The unfortunate truth is that the people who called like that were almost always wrong. The service wasn’t slow because of the servers. It was slow because of their own internet connection. If I’d simply done what I was told, I’d have spent time and their money fixing something that was never broken and the real problem would still be sitting there.

    So I learned to do the opposite of what was asked. Instead of jumping to the fix they’d named, I’d go back to step one and work carefully through each part of the problem until I found the actual cause. Only then could I recommend the right solution. Not the solution they walked in with but the one that would actually work.

    That methodology is the single most important thing I brought with me into web design. And it’s why I think most websites disappoint the people who paid for them.

    So, do I need a new website?

    Quite possibly, yes. I’m not going to talk you out of one. A website that genuinely works for your business is one of the best investments you can make, and small differences, done well, add up to a big one.

    But here’s the thing. “I need a new website” is a diagnosis, the same as “you need to fix the servers.” It’s a fix someone has landed on, usually because the current site feels dated, or it isn’t bringing in enquiries, or it just doesn’t feel like them anymore. Those are real and valid frustrations. The problem is that “make it look nicer” treats the symptom, and a brand-new website built to that brief will look lovely and still fail to do its job – which is exactly the experience that left so many business owners feeling burned by their last one.

    A website that disappoints almost always traces back to the same missing step: nobody did the strategy work first.

    Why we’re all a bit blind to our own business

    There’s a reason this is so hard to see from the inside, and it’s not a failing, it’s human.

    When you run a business, it’s on your mind every single day. You know it inside out. And because you understand it so completely, you naturally assume everyone else does too. You feel like you only need to say something once for it to land. In reality, the people you’re trying to reach are coming to you cold, and you have to explain yourself clearly, more than once, in language that makes sense to them, not to you.

    This is where an outsider earns their keep. I don’t know your business better than you do; you always will. But I get to see it through the eyes of the people you’re actually trying to win over – the ones who don’t already understand you. Put your knowledge of the business together with that honest outside view, work through it collaboratively, and you get something neither of us would have reached alone. That’s the whole point of starting with strategy rather than design.

    What that looks like in practice

    A care provider came to us wanting a fresh look and better photography for their website. A reasonable request – the old site did feel tired.

    But before touching the design, we worked through who the site was actually for. The existing one spoke almost entirely to one audience: the families they care for. Warm, and important. The trouble was that around half of their referrals didn’t come from families at all, they came through local authorities. An entirely different audience, with entirely different needs, and the old site said next to nothing to them. The business knew this perfectly well; it simply hadn’t occurred to anyone that the website needed to say it, because it was so obvious from the inside.

    So before any design happened, we planned the site around who was really reading it. A dedicated route giving local authorities exactly what they need to make a referral. And the family-facing pages rewritten around the real worries and questions a parent has when they’re searching at a frightening time, answering the concerns directly on the page.

    They came asking for imagery and what they actually needed was to stop being invisible to half their customers. They got a genuinely new website out of it, but one built to do a job, not just to look better.

    The question worth asking

    So if you’re wondering whether you need a new website, that’s the right instinct but it’s the wrong first question. The better one is: what is this website actually for, and who really needs to understand it? Answer that properly and the website almost designs itself. Skip it, and you’ve bought a nicer version of the same problem.

    That’s how we plan a website, and it’s why we start every project with the strategy and understanding before a single page is designed.

    If you’d like an honest outside view of your own digital presence, that’s exactly what our free Digital Presence Assessment is for. We’re based in Norfolk and happy to talk it through.

  • Why I Started Small Tweaks

    Why I Started Small Tweaks

    It was a mild weekend in February, and I was sitting by a lake.

    I’d been reflecting on my day job, and I realised something was missing. I was working hard, trying to make a success of myself – but nobody really cared. Not really. The people I was serving were just going to work, like me. They weren’t the business owners I used to help, and that was the thing I was craving.

    I wanted to help people who needed it. People who would genuinely appreciate it, because the work would make a real difference to their lives.

    The work that came before

    I’d already done a handful of website projects over the years – ad-hoc things, mostly friends referring people my way. Sitting by that lake, I found myself thinking about an old client I’d helped with some small changes once before.

    I knew they weren’t reaching their potential online. Not even close. So I started researching how they were perceived online, how they compared to their competitors, where the gaps were. I wanted to help them, and I knew they needed it, they just didn’t know where to start.

    That’s when Small Tweaks was born. The moment I realised I needed to do work that was meaningful and work that actually made a difference.

    (That client, by the way, is someone we still work with regularly today, helping them give the best possible service to their customers.)

    What a decade in data centres taught me

    Before this, I spent around ten years in the data centre world. My time was split between helping customers directly and managing the infrastructure their businesses relied on.

    These people trusted me to protect their business. To keep them online so they could sleep at night. I understood from the start what a responsibility that was. It was daunting, but that’s exactly what drove me to do a great job. When someone is trusting you with the thing that keeps their livelihood running, you don’t cut corners.

    It taught me how to build systems that are stable, reliable and resilient. Not chasing every shiny new piece of technology, but staying current and moving with a healthy scepticism. Knowing the difference between something that’s genuinely better and something that’s just new.

    And it taught me something about small business that I’ve never forgotten. Small business is special. It’s real, normal people who put their house on the line to start something. People who quietly don’t pay themselves one month so they can pay their team. I had to look these people in the eye, and they had to trust me. That stays with you.

    Why “Small Tweaks”

    I’ve always paid attention to detail where others haven’t and it almost always pays off.

    I’ve lost count of the times I’ve watched people ignore small details that seemed so obvious to me. Details I knew would make a difference. Because here’s the thing: small details add up. They compound over time, and they’re what put you far above everyone else.

    The reverse is true too. Something that feels tiny in isolation, left ignored, compounds in the other direction. It’s what leaves a business quietly struggling to keep up with competitors, without ever really understanding why.

    That’s where the name comes from. We care about the detail and we understand the difference that small tweaks make over time.

    What I believe

    I see a lot of small businesses that look, from the outside, like they’re not even trying.

    But that’s not the truth. The truth is they care deeply about keeping their business alive – the technology industry has just failed them.

    The media would have you believe that everyone is on their way to coding humanoid robots to do their housework. The reality is that most small businesses don’t know the first thing about SEO, or how their email accounts actually work. And worse, they don’t know where to start. All while every big technology company is spending billions to entice them in, each one insisting their product is the thing that will change everything – it’s completely overwhelming.

    I want that to change.

    I want those people to feel like they’ve got someone they can call. Someone they can talk to for honest advice, who’ll hold their hand through the process. Because not everyone needs to become a technology expert. We need the skills they specialise in too – the plumbing, the care, the craft, the service. They should be free to focus on that, knowing the digital side is in good hands.

    Where this is going

    My ambition for Small Tweaks is simple. I want it to be the place businesses turn to when they need to understand their digital presence and work out what’s actually worth doing.

    Not a list of everything that’s wrong. A clear sense of which changes will genuinely push the needle helping them win more customers, improve the experience they offer, and save time through smarter ways of working and a bit of education along the way.

    It started by a lake, with one business I wanted to help.

    The goal now is to do that for as many as I can.

  • Why Your Website Is Costing You Clients (and how to fix it)

    Why Your Website Is Costing You Clients (and how to fix it)

    Imagine walking into a shop that hasn’t been redecorated in ten years. You ask the shopkeeper to help you find something, but they can’t answer your questions properly and it feels like they don’t really care whether you buy anything or not.

    That’s what visiting a lot of small business websites feels like in 2026.

    Not because the business owner doesn’t care. Usually they care deeply. But the website was built quickly, by someone who moved on, and nobody with real technical knowledge has sat down and looked at it properly since.

    I spent a decade in IT infrastructure. When something breaks at 2am on a Saturday, you get the call. That kind of environment teaches you to care about doing things properly the first time, because shortcuts have consequences.

    The thing about a website is that the shortcuts aren’t always obvious. There’s no alarm going off. No error message. The site is just quietly letting you down, day after day, while you’re busy running your business.

    Here’s what I see most often when I look under the hood of a small business website.

    It describes the business instead of speaking to the customer

    Most small business websites are written from the inside out. They explain what the business does, how long they’ve been trading, what services they offer. But a potential customer arriving at your website for the first time has one question: can you help me? If your website can’t answer that quickly and clearly, in their language, about their problem – they’re gone.

    The design undermines the credibility of the business

    Poor quality images. Inconsistent fonts. A layout that looks dated on a desktop and broken on a phone. These things might seem superficial, but perception matters enormously. A customer who doesn’t know you yet is making a judgement call in seconds. If your website looks like it hasn’t been touched since 2014, that’s the impression they’re forming of your business.

    Nobody has thought about the actual customer journey

    I once looked at a business that sold products online but had no way for customers to filter or compare them. The owners knew their range inside out so to them, it all made sense. But a new visitor had to click into every single product page individually just to understand what was available. The owners couldn’t see it because they weren’t the ones experiencing it – but they were losing sales because of it.

    This is one of the most common problems I find – not that the website is broken, but that nobody has ever looked at it through the eyes of a first-time visitor.

    The basics haven’t been set up properly

    No analytics, so there’s no way to know if anyone is even visiting. Contact forms that look fine but send emails straight to spam. A Google Business Profile that’s either missing entirely or showing the wrong address and phone number. An SEO setup that means the site essentially doesn’t exist to anyone searching for what the business offers.

    None of these things are catastrophic on their own. But together, they quietly chip away and the cost isn’t always visible. It shows up as enquiries that never came, customers who chose someone else, and a business that’s working harder than it should have to.

    So what should you do about it?

    Start by trying to see your website the way a stranger would.

    You’re not looking at it as the person who knows every product, every service, every team member. You’re looking at it as someone who found you on Google thirty seconds ago and is trying to work out whether you’re worth their time.

    What do they see? What questions do they have? Can they find answers easily? Does the site make them feel confident, or uncertain?

    If you’re not sure, that’s worth finding out.

    We help UK businesses understand how they’re perceived online, from the outside in. If it would be useful, we can put together a report for you that gives an honest picture of how your business looks to someone discovering it for the first time. It’s free, and if you need any more help from there, we can talk then.

    Get your free Digital Presence Assessment →