Fifteen Years in Business - The Story of Website Sorted

Fifteen years in business, happy birthday to us! To celebrate this milestone our director Neil Kinnerly thought he would share the story of how the business started back in March 2006 and how it has developed to become Website Sorted.

How the Business Started

For fifteen years I was employed by Somerfield, the Food Retailer, as their Logistics Commercial Director. During 2005 my career took an unplanned change of direction as Somerfield were subject to a Venture Capital buyout. The business was sold off ‘piece by piece’ and I, along with 25,000 colleagues, was made redundant and for me this was the opportunity that I had been waiting for to create a business for myself!

I took six months off with my family but used the time wisely to review possible business opportunities. I considered a small parcel carrier, retail shop and a technology company, but very quickly came to the conclusion that the Internet was going to present the best business opportunity. These were early days for Google but it was already clear that businesses would need to have a strong search engine presence to survive!

On 6^th March 2006 I registered my new business, The Best of Bristol Ltd – an online directory for ‘local businesses’. Over a period of five years the business directory grew to represent over 250 Bristol businesses, all of whom we knew personally, and it became clear that we could offer additional business opportunities for our customers by brokering introductions between them...

Seeking New Opportunities

On the 10 ^th  December 2009 we hosted the first ‘Best of Bristol Business Exhibition’ with 25 exhibitors – an opportunity for our clients to meet, network and do business! The format proved to be extremely popular with events held twice a year and by 2016 with 150 exhibitors, firmly established as Bristol’s largest business exhibition. With competition setting up rival events and the business diversifying into SEO and Website Design, we decided to call it a day and we ran our last business event on Tuesday 13^th September 2016.

With a growing business portfolio and always looking for new business opportunities, the decision was made to offer website design & SEO services. This was an obvious progression to offer complimentary web services and Website Sorted was launched in September 2009 with our first client website going live on 22 ^nd  October 2009.

Video from our 2016 Business Exhibition

Fifteen Years Later...

Fifteen years in business and looking back over the years we have worked with over 1,800 businesses. Today we have a very diverse customer portfolio that includes small local businesses to national companies promoting their services across the UK. We design and build simple brochure websites through to very complex eCommerce solutions, and everything in between. We pride ourselves on the transparency of our offer, focused customer service and excellent customer communications. We offer clear and honest advice, we stay up to date with industry changes and we never try to ‘cheat’ the search engines. Our customers trust us and as a result, they are very happy to recommend our services.

I am proud to say that we have designed and built over 500 websites. With this number of projects, it is difficult to identify favourites because I think all our websites are great! That said a few recent examples stand out and I will be led by what our customers say and the success they achieve...

N3 Display Graphics

"Excellent interpretation of the brief, competitive costs and swift fulfilment. It has been a real pleasure working with the Website Sorted team. Highly recommended."
Nigel Peeck, Director

www.n3dislay.co.uk

Berwick Lodge

"We LOVE the website!! Sarah has said more than once that she thinks it looks so slick. And the wedding enquiries have been flooding in so it must be doing a good job of selling the venue."
Jo Maggs, Wedding Sales & Marketing Manager

www.berwicklodge.co.uk

"I genuinely believe honesty and transparency are the keys to business longevity"

My son Jack joined the business 10 years ago and now runs our office in Wales. Between us, our overriding business ethos is to always put customer needs first. Yes we are in business to make a profit, but I genuinely believe honesty and transparency are the keys to business longevity.

Going forward we are planning further business growth by working with existing customers and raising our profile via our website and social media.
We are a focussed small family business and looking forward to the next 15 years.