Why I only work within an hour of Arthur's Seat

The photo at the top is me with my cousins on top of Arthur's Seat, on a grey Saturday in October with the wind doing its best to take the hat. Behind us is Leith, the Forth, Fife on the far side, and if you turn round, Portobello, Musselburgh and the start of East Lothian. On a clear day you can see most of the places I work.

That is not a coincidence. When I set up WebLothian I drew the line at about an hour's drive from that hill: Edinburgh and the three Lothians. People sometimes ask why a web developer would limit himself to one corner of Scotland when the work can be done from anywhere. This post is the answer, and it includes the cases where I think being local genuinely does not matter, because you deserve to know those before you choose on it.

What being local actually gets you

I can come and see the shop. The most useful hour on most projects is the one spent standing in the business watching what happens. Where the phone is. How a customer asks for a quote. What the receptionist writes down and what she has to ask twice. A booking form designed from the other end of a video call is a guess; one designed after an afternoon behind the counter is not.

I know the places. I know that Portobello and Joppa are different high streets to the people who live there, that Haddington is not Edinburgh and does not want to be, and that "West Lothian" means Livingston to some people and Linlithgow to others. That matters when your website says where you work. Google's map results, the ones with the pin and the opening hours, favour businesses whose listing and website agree about where they are and what they are called, and the free listing that shows those hours, your reviews and your map pin is the single most important thing most local businesses never set up properly. Getting it right means knowing the local names, not just the postcodes.

You can ring, and I answer. Not a ticket system, not an account manager. A person who knows your site because he built it, and who can be in your shop on Thursday if the till is not talking to the booking system.

You can check up on me. Every business I have worked with is within driving distance of every other. If you want to know what it is like to work with me, you can go and ask the garage, the cafe or the physio, in person, and they can tell you the truth. That keeps me honest in a way a testimonial page never could.

Why the hour, and not the whole of Scotland

Because the visit only works if it is easy. An hour means I can be there and back in a morning, which means I actually go, rather than meaning to. Push it to three hours and the visit becomes a one-off at the start of a project instead of a habit, and then I am just a remote developer with a Scottish accent.

It also means the businesses I work with share a market. A plumber in Dalkeith and a plumber in Bathgate are competing in the same search results for a lot of the same customers, and the things that work for one tend to work for the other. I learn something on every project that is directly useful on the next, because the next one is down the road.

When local does not matter

Here is the honest part, because a post that only argued for itself would not be worth your time.

If you sell online across the country. A shop that posts orders to Inverness and Cornwall does not need a developer who can walk to the shop. It needs one who understands online selling, delivery, returns and the rules around them. Hire for that, wherever they are.

If you only need a simple site. A page or two that says who you are, what you do and how to get in touch, with a photo and a map. Any competent developer anywhere can build that, and the better question is whether you need a developer at all or a good template and an afternoon.

If your business is not really a local one. Software sold to other businesses, a consultancy that works by phone, a trade that travels the whole country. For these the map pin is not where the customers come from, and the local knowledge I am describing is worth little.

If the local person is not good. This is the one people forget. A developer who lives nearby and does poor work is still a poor developer. Being able to visit does not fix a site that loads slowly, forgets to send your enquiries, or cannot be edited without ringing someone. Judge the work first: look at sites they have built, ring the businesses, try the forms. Then, if two are equally good, choose the one who can come round.

What I would check before choosing anyone

A short list, because the long one is on the how it works page.

• Ask to see three sites they built for businesses like yours, and try the contact form on each one to see what happens.
• Ask who you ring when it breaks, and whether that person built it.
• Ask what you own at the end: the web address, the site, the pictures, the login. All of it should be yours.
• Ask what happens if they go on holiday, or go out of business.
• Ask for the price in writing before any work starts, and what is not included.

If the answers are good, where they live is the last question, not the first.

Back to the hill

My cousins were not there for the business, to be clear. They were there for the chips in Portobello afterwards. But standing up there, with most of the Lothians laid out below, is a good reminder of what the business is for: the shops, trades and practices in that view, most of which still do not come up when somebody nearby searches for what they do.

If yours is one of them, the fix usually starts with that free Google listing and a website that says plainly where you are and what you do. That is what SEO and your Google Business Profile is about here: making your business easier to find on Google for the people who are already nearby. If you would rather talk it through first, book a free consultation (opens in a new tab), and I will tell you whether you need any of it.