John Dixon called me on a Thursday afternoon about his pub website. He was frustrated, not yet angry, but getting close. His old designer had stopped replying to emails properly. When John did hear back, it took weeks to get anything done. A menu update. Some text changes. Nothing complicated. Nothing that should have taken more than an hour to implement.
But it had taken eight or nine emails spread across weeks. Eight or nine back-and-forths for what should have been a quick job.
By the time he rang me, John had moved on. He did not want explanations. He just wanted someone who would actually do the work.
This is more common than you think
A lot of small businesses end up in that spot. Your website worked fine when it was built. But then the designer got busy, or distracted, or decided they were only going to work on new projects now. Suddenly you cannot get a response. Your site gets outdated. You notice competitors have things you do not. You feel stuck.
The problem is that websites are not like buildings. They need attention. They need updates. They need someone who is around to fix things when they break.
Most designers know this. But there is a difference between knowing it and actually showing up for it.
The Carriages story
John runs Carriages, a pub in Knaresborough. He took me on when he was at the end of his tether with his previous situation. Lots of emails going nowhere. Updates taking forever. He wanted someone who could actually help.
I rebuilt his site from scratch. New design, better structure, proper typography. The kind of thing that should have happened earlier. But here is the thing that matters more than the design work itself.
That bank holiday after we went live was the busiest John has had since he took over the pub. Not because of the website alone. But the website was doing its job properly for the first time. People could see what was on, find out how to book, actually use it without it frustrating them.
After that, his traffic numbers went up by 50 to 60 percent a week. Fifty to 60 percent. That is not a small number. That is the difference between a site that works and one that does not.
Why this matters
I am not telling you this to brag. I am telling you this because it shows what breaks when a designer relationship goes wrong.
It is not just that you lose someone to call. It is that your site falls behind. Competitors improve theirs. Your copy gets stale. Your design looks dated. People still visit because of the old links or Google rankings. But they do not stay, and they do not buy.
Then when you finally fix it, the improvement is dramatic because you have been standing still while the rest of the world moved on.
What to do if this is happening to you
First, be honest about whether your designer is still interested. Sometimes designers close their client book because they want to focus on new work, and they just do not tell anyone. Sometimes they are overloaded and cannot cope. Sometimes they have moved on to something else entirely. None of that is a judgment. But it means they are not the right person for you anymore.
Second, do not wait. The longer you wait, the further behind you get. Your site gets more outdated. Your confidence gets more eroded. The problems get bigger.
Third, look for someone who treats maintenance as part of the job, not an afterthought. Someone who is going to be around. Someone who will pick up the phone and answer email the same day. Someone who understands that a website is not a one-time thing.
That might be a freelancer like me. It might be someone else. But make that part of the conversation upfront. Ask them directly what happens after launch. Ask how they handle updates. Ask what the turnaround time is for small requests.
If they seem evasive, or if they talk about it like it is a pain rather than part of the service, that is your signal to look elsewhere.
The real cost
John lost weeks getting updates done. Those weeks cost him money. Probably not a huge amount each time. But it added up. It added up in missed bookings, in traffic that went to other pubs, in the frustration of not being able to run his own business the way he wanted to.
When he fixed it, everything changed. Not because the new design was fancy or clever. But because it actually worked, and because someone was there to look after it.
If you are in that spot right now, waiting for emails, getting no response when you do, sitting with a website you cannot update, you do not have to keep waiting.
