Web design in Stockport.
Independents, diaries and the SK postcodes.

Stockport’s independent trade — cafés, dessert shops, studios, salons, small retail — has a particular problem we see over and over: the business is good, the Instagram is better than the website, and everything operational happens in direct messages. The build worth paying for here is usually the one that turns those messages into a diary or an order.

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When the business is run out of the Instagram inbox

This is the single most common Stockport brief, and it is a bigger job than it sounds because the inbox is doing four things at once.

Bookings

An inbox cannot stop a double booking and cannot hold a deposit. A diary that cannot overlap is a database rule, and the deposit is what makes a no-show cost the customer rather than the business.

Orders and specials

Cake orders, platters, collections for a date — all of it currently negotiated in messages, with the price agreed differently each time. A form with option groups and a real price ends that.

The waiting list

Independents lose more money to unfilled cancellations than to anything else. A list that texts the next person automatically is a small build with an immediate return.

Proof you were asked

Written cancellation terms, shown before payment, exist for the argument you are eventually going to have. UK consumer rules set what has to be said and when.

Sources, checked 26 October 2026

legislation.gov.uk, Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 30: the 14-day cancellation period
Food Standards Agency, Allergen guidance for food businesses: providing allergen information and handling allergens

What a no-show actually costs, before you decide a deposit is rude

Most Stockport owners we talk to have never put a figure on this and are surprised by it.

Do the arithmetic first We publish a free calculator that takes your appointment value, your week’s volume and your missed rate and gives you the annual number. Bring your own figures; we do not need them and we do not keep them.
Then pick the smallest fix Usually a card held rather than a deposit taken, plus a reminder the day before. Deposits lose bookings; a held card loses almost none.
Then measure whether it worked If the missed rate does not move in six weeks, the problem was the reminder, not the money.

When we are the wrong firm for this

If your trade is genuinely doing well out of Instagram and the only friction is that you are tired of typing, the right first build might be a booking page and nothing else — no new website, no rebrand. We will quote for that and we will not bundle a site you did not ask for into it. If you want a full shop with stock, couriers and returns and you sell fewer than a few orders a week, the shop will cost more to run than it returns for a while, and you should know that before, not after.

The test we apply is whether the build removes a job somebody is doing by hand every day. If it does not, it can wait.

Questions

Before you ask.

Can you just build a booking page?

Yes, and sometimes that is all we would recommend. A diary that cannot double-book, takes a deposit or holds a card, and sends its own reminders, with no new website attached.

Will it work with the way we already take orders?

It has to. The usual arrangement is that the new system takes the structured work — bookings, payments, orders — and the inbox goes back to being conversation rather than administration.

Do you come out to Stockport?

Yes. It is a short drive, and anything involving a till, a printer or staff training happens in person on the day.

Ready to get started?

Tell us what you need. We will scope it, price it and build it.

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Web design in Stockport.Independents, diaries and the SK postcodes.