Business systems · Scarborough
Software, automation and websites · Scarborough

Your business probably doesn’t need another website.

It needs fewer lost customers, less repetitive admin and systems that talk to each other. I find where a business is losing time and money, then build the software, automation or website that fixes it.

Find my biggest leak See what I fix

No sales pitch first: we start with the problem and work out the technology afterwards. Based in Scarborough, working with businesses across North Yorkshire and further afield.

Where the week goesA typical week

The phone rings while you are on a job.
It rings out. They ring the next name on the list.
A quote goes out on Tuesday.
Nobody chases it. By the following week nobody is sure what happened to it.
A booking comes in by email.
Somebody types it into the diary, the spreadsheet and the invoicing. Every time.
A customer asks what time you close.
Fourth call today. Same answer. Same interruption.

None of these is a website problem. All of them can be fixed.

Sound familiar?

Most businesses don’t have a technology problem. They have problems technology can fix.

These are the things I look for. Each one costs money in a way that never shows up on an invoice, which is why they survive for years.

  1. Leak 01Front of house

    Missed calls become lost customers

    You are busy doing the actual work, so the phone rings out. The caller does not leave a message. They ring someone else.

    The usual fix An automatic text back to the number that rang, and the enquiry captured somewhere you will see it.

  2. Leak 02Sales

    Quotes disappear into a black hole

    You spend an evening pricing a job, send it, and hear nothing. Nobody has time to chase, so nobody does.

    The usual fix Quotes tracked in one place, followed up automatically, with the ones that need a human call flagged.

  3. Leak 03Back office

    Staff keep doing the same admin by hand

    Copying details from one place to another, sending the same reminder, updating a spreadsheet, chasing people. Because that is how it has always been done.

    The usual fix A small internal tool or automation that does the repetitive part and leaves the judgement to the person.

  4. Leak 04Website

    The website gets visits but not enquiries

    People arrive, look, and leave. Nothing on the page makes the next step obvious, or the next step is a form nobody wants to fill in.

    The usual fix Clearer journeys to the enquiry, a form that asks for less, and tracking so you can see what changed.

  5. Leak 05Front of house

    Customers keep asking the same questions

    Opening times, prices, whether you do a particular job, where to park. Staff answer them all day, one at a time.

    The usual fix The answers where people look for them, and self-service for the things that do not need a person.

  6. Leak 06Systems

    Your systems do not talk to each other

    The same customer lives in your email, your diary, your accounts package and a spreadsheet. Someone has to keep them all matching.

    The usual fix Connecting what you already have, so information is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed.

How it works

I don’t start with the solution.

You do not need to decide whether you need a website, automation or custom software before speaking to me. Start with the problem. We work out the technology afterwards.

  1. Find the leak

    We map how customers find you, contact you, get a quote, book, and hear back — and what your staff do by hand to make that happen. Somewhere in there is the thing that costs the most.

  2. Build the fix

    The right tool for that problem, and only that problem: a website, an automation, an internal tool, a connection between two systems you already pay for. The smallest thing that actually fixes it.

  3. Measure what changed

    Then we look at what happened, remove the next bit of friction and keep going. I would rather be useful to a business for years than launch something and disappear.

Work I can show you

Two problems, told properly.

Both of these were websites, because in both cases that was the right fix. What I look at first is the problem, and what I can show you is what changed. No figures are quoted here that nobody measured.

mnockels.com
The M. Nockels website on a desktop browser: the painted shop sign reproduced as the page heading, above a short introduction and buttons for ringing the counter and checking opening times.
The same M. Nockels website on a phone, with the sign, introduction and buttons stacked into one readable column.
Live client site Butcher, Scarborough Market Hall

M. Nockels Ltd

The oldest butcher in Scarborough, trading from the Market Hall since 1919, with nowhere of their own online.

The problem
Customers found them through a Facebook page or by walking past the counter. Anyone who wanted opening times, an idea of what was on the counter that week, or the trade supply side of the business had to ring up or turn up.
Why it mattered
Every one of those questions was a phone call answered mid-serve, or a wasted trip when the answer was no. The trade side, which is a different customer entirely, had no way of finding out it existed.
What I built
One clear site built around their own painted market-hall sign: what they sell, opening times, phone number, where to find them, the trade supply side, and a specials board that can be changed whenever the offers on the counter change.
What changed
There is now one address to give out and one place that is always right. The week's specials are updated from the shop rather than described down the phone, and trade customers have a page written for them.
Visit mnockels.com Tell me about yours
smilierwarrior.com
The smilierwarrior.com website on a desktop browser: a dark plum page headed One life, different kinds of story, with two chapter cards below it.
The same page of smilierwarrior.com on a phone, with the two chapter cards stacked into one column.
Live client site Personal writing site

Smilier Warrior

A writer's own place to publish: her story in her own words, alongside a journal she keeps adding to.

The problem
Two quite different kinds of writing, a long autobiography and a journal of shorter dated entries, with no home that suited both. Readers arriving for one had to wade through the other.
Why it mattered
Writing that people cannot find their way around does not get read. She also needed to keep adding entries herself without asking anyone each time.
What I built
A quiet, dark-toned site built around the words: a clear split between the autobiography and the journal, entries grouped by subject and date, and a simple way for readers to get in touch.
What changed
A reader can go straight to a chapter or straight to the latest entry, and new entries go up without a developer in the loop.
Visit smilierwarrior.com Tell me about yours
What the fix might involve

The solution depends on the problem.

These are the tools. None of them is the point. We decide which of them, if any, after understanding what is actually going wrong.

Read the problems I fix, one by one

Websites that do something

  • Enquiry and quote forms that people finish
  • Booking built in, not linked out
  • Customer portals and online payments
  • Tracking that shows what visitors actually do

Automation

  • Missed-call text-backs
  • Quote and invoice follow-up
  • Booking reminders by text or email
  • Review requests after a job

Internal tools

  • Job and enquiry tracking
  • Simple customer records that fit how you work
  • Dashboards for the numbers that matter
  • Staff-facing screens for the daily routine

Integrations

  • Connecting the systems you already pay for
  • Information entered once, not three times
  • Hand-offs between people made automatic
  • Data pulled together where it can be seen
What it looks like

Before and after.

Before

A customer calls. Nobody answers. They call someone else.

After

A customer calls. Nobody answers. Within a minute they get a text: “Sorry we missed you — what can we help with?” Their reply lands in a list you check when you are back at the van.

Before

A quote is emailed. Nobody follows it up. Three weeks later nobody knows what happened to it.

After

The quote is tracked. The customer gets a polite follow-up without anyone remembering to send it. You can see at a glance which quotes need a call.

Before

Someone copies each booking into the diary, the job sheet and the invoicing, and gets the phone number wrong once a month.

After

The customer enters it once. Everything else fills itself in.

Free Business Leak Audit

Let me find one thing your business shouldn’t still be doing the hard way.

Tell me a little about the business below. I will spend some time looking at how customers find you, contact you and move through the business, and at the repetitive work your team handles every day.

Then I will tell you the biggest obvious bottleneck I can see and how I would fix it. If I cannot see anything worth solving, I will tell you that instead. Either way it costs nothing and I will not chase you.

  • How enquiries arrive, and what happens to them
  • What happens when nobody can answer the phone
  • How quotes are followed up
  • How customers book, and where they give up
  • Where staff repeat the same manual work
  • Whether the website is helping or getting in the way
Book my free audit

This works best for businesses where a missed customer, a wasted staff hour or a broken process has a real cost. If you just need a straightforward website, I do those too — say so on the form.

Book the audit

Tell me where the time goes.

Five short answers and I have enough to start. Write it the way you would say it to me across a counter.

About you
About the business
Where the time goes

Your answers are stored privately so I can look into them and reply. Nothing is shared or used for marketing — see the privacy notice. You can email uzboth.max@gmail.com instead if you prefer.

What happens next

I read your answers, look at whatever is public about the business, and come back to you with what I found. If it is worth a conversation we have one. If it is not, I say so. No proposal arrives until we have agreed what the problem actually is.

Who this suits

  • An established business with regular enquiries
  • Customers worth real money to you
  • Admin, quoting or booking still done by hand
  • A willingness to change how something is done

What it costs

The audit is free. Anything I build afterwards is scoped around the problem and priced before it starts, in writing. Simple website work starts from £149 to set up and £30 a month to host and look after.

Prefer email?

uzboth.max@gmail.com

Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Enquiries come straight to me, and I answer them myself.

Who you are dealing with

I’m Max. I build systems for businesses.

I am a software developer in Scarborough who became far more interested in the business problem than the code. My day job is building the software an operating business runs on: internal tools, customer messages, data moving between systems, screens for staff who need the right information at the right moment.

What that has taught me is that businesses rarely need technology for its own sake. They need something expensive, slow or frustrating to stop happening. That is what I look for.

More about how I work

Worth knowing

  • One person from start to finish. No account managers, no handovers.
  • I am not interested in selling you software you do not need. If the existing website is fine, we leave it alone.
  • No long contracts. Stay because the system is useful, not because you are trapped.
  • I run this alongside a full-time development job, so I agree realistic dates with you up front rather than promising one I cannot keep.
Common questions

The things people usually ask.

If yours is not here, put it on the form and I will answer it properly.

Do I need to know what I want before I get in touch?

No, and it is better if you do not. Tell me what is annoying, slow or expensive and let me work out what would fix it. People who arrive certain they need a new website are sometimes right, and sometimes the website is fine and the problem is what happens after somebody fills in the form.

What does the audit actually involve?

You answer the short form. I look at what you have told me and at whatever is public: your website if there is one, how you can be contacted, what a customer sees when they try to book or ask for a quote. Then I write back with the biggest obvious bottleneck I can find and how I would fix it. If it would help, we talk it through on a call.

It is free because it is how I find out whether I can be useful to you. If I cannot, I will say so.

What if my website is fine?

Then we leave it alone. Plenty of businesses have a perfectly acceptable website and are still losing money because enquiries are not followed up, staff are copying information between systems, or customers give up halfway through booking. Those are the problems I am more interested in anyway.

What sort of things do you build?

Websites, yes. Also the things behind them: automatic follow-up by text or email, small internal tools for tracking jobs or quotes, connections between the systems you already use so information is entered once, dashboards, booking, customer records that fit how you actually work. The what I fix page goes through the common problems one by one.

How much does it cost?

It depends on the problem, which is why I do not publish a price list. Every piece of work is scoped around what it needs to fix and priced in writing before it starts: what it costs to build, what it costs to keep running, and what each of those covers. Nothing begins until you have agreed both.

For a sense of scale, simple website work starts from £149 to set up and £30 a month to host and look after. More involved systems are priced against the problem they solve, so the question is always whether the fix costs less than the leak.

Will you tie me into a contract?

No long contracts. Where something has an ongoing cost, such as hosting or an automation that runs every day, the notice period and what happens if you stop are written into the quote before we start. You stay because the system is useful.

Can you guarantee results?

I can guarantee what I control. We define what success looks like before work begins, and if I cannot deliver the system we agreed, I will make it right. What I will not do is promise you a number of new customers or a position in search results, because that depends on your prices, your reputation, whether the phone gets answered and a dozen other things that are yours, not mine.

How quickly can you start?

We agree the schedule once I know the scope. I run this alongside a full-time job, so I would rather give you a date I can keep than a headline turnaround I cannot. Small fixes are often quick; anything bigger is planned properly.

Do you only work with businesses in Scarborough?

No. I am based in Scarborough and a lot of my work is local, but most of it happens over email and calls anyway, so distance is not a problem.