About
I'm Reece. I run The Fresh Site — a small studio building hand-coded websites for UK service businesses, one at a time.
Here's how I got here.
Tools first
I started on the tools at 16. Carpentry first, then bathroom fitting. Proper work. Long days, cold mornings, the occasional finger injury I won't get into. I liked the work and I was good at it, but I noticed something pretty quickly.
The best tradesman on a job site wasn't always the one with the most work booked in. The one with the most work was usually the one with the cleanest van, the tidiest invoice, and a website that didn't look like it was built by his nephew in 2014.
Skill got you respect on site. Marketing got you the next job.
Watching good lads lose work
I watched genuinely brilliant carpenters — better than me, better than most — sit at home in February with no work on. Meanwhile the lad down the road who couldn't hang a door straight was three months booked out because he had a half-decent site and ran a few Facebook ads.
That bothered me. Still does.
So I taught myself.
Learning to code the hard way
I learned to design in Figma. Then I learned to code properly — HTML, CSS, the JavaScript I needed, and a build framework (Astro) that ships sites that load in under two seconds on a phone.
Then I learned to run ads. Meta first, then Google. I ran them for my own business. I burnt money on bad campaigns, fixed them, burnt less money, fixed them again. Eventually the leads came in cheaper than I could close them.
I generated thousands of leads doing it. Not a typo. Thousands.
The pivot
Other tradesmen started asking how I was getting so much work without leafleting or knocking doors. I'd send them my site and the rough ad setup and they'd say "can you just do mine?"
The first one was Bayline Carpentry. £142 of Meta spend, 17 leads, 5 jobs closed, £10,000 of work in their book.
That was the proof I needed that this wasn't a fluke.
Now I do this full-time. Web first, ads after, only for clients whose sites I've built.
How the studio runs
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Founder-led, senior-only.
I run every build. Right now that means I'm hands-on with the work. As the studio grows, I only bring in senior craftspeople I'd hire to build my own site. No juniors learning on your project. No offshoring. No account managers sitting between you and the maker. The standard doesn't move when the team does.
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Three builds a month, capped.
That's what the studio delivers to standard. When the three are booked, the next slot is the following month. The cap is the quality control.
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No platforms, no page builders.
Every site is hand-coded in Astro. That means it loads fast, ranks well, and you don't pay a monthly fee to a software company to keep your business online.
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No agency theatre.
No decks, no discovery workshops, no "let's circle back." You tell me what you do and what you need the site to do. I quote you on the call. You say yes or no. If it's yes, we start.
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Fixed price, fixed timeline.
£750 or £1,500. Four days or eight days. If we're late, you get a day-rate refund per day late. Skin in the game.
What I won't do
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I won't take on a build I don't think will work. If your business is half-formed, your offer isn't clear, or you want a site to "see what happens" — I'll tell you to come back when you're ready. Wasting your money wastes my time.
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I won't hide behind a faceless agency front. The studio is small and founder-led. If something goes wrong, you get a senior person who can actually fix it. Not a ticket queue.
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I won't use templates. Not because templates are evil. Because they're the reason every plumber's site in your area looks identical. The whole point of paying for a custom site is that it isn't one.
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I won't run ads for sites I haven't built. The page has to convert before the spend makes sense. That gate isn't going anywhere.
Where I'm based
South of England. Most clients are UK service businesses — trades, beauty, baby brands, small studios. Geography doesn't matter much for the work itself. I've never met most clients in person and the sites still ship on time.
The work, in two lines
- Bayline Carpentry: £142 of Meta spend → 17 leads → 5 jobs → £10,000 of revenue in one month.
- Tiny Dreamers: UK baby brand, premium feel without going slow, live and ready for paid traffic from launch day.
Last bit
Ready for a site that earns?
15-minute call. You tell me what your business does and what you want the site to do. I'll tell you the tier, the timeline, and the price on the call. If I can't help, I'll tell you that too.
No deck. No pitch. No follow-up sequence.