SWS — Stourbridge Web Studio, home
About / The studio

A small studiowith strongopinions.

Stourbridge Web Studio exists because too many good businesses are represented online by websites that look nothing like them. We fix that with design, development and search treated as one job.

01 / Why we exist

Most business websites are bought the way people buy a boiler: in a hurry, from whoever answered the phone.

The result is a town full of excellent tradespeople, practices and shops represented by templates, stock photos and pages Google has no reason to show anyone. The business is good. The website says otherwise.

We started Stourbridge Web Studio to do the opposite: design that looks like the business at its best, engineering that makes it fast, and search work that makes sure the people looking for it actually find it. Three disciplines, one conversation.

We are deliberately small, deliberately local and deliberately picky about the work we take on. It is a better way to make websites. It is also, we think, a better way to run a studio.

02 / Principles

What we
believe.

  1. 01 /

    Design and search, together

    We never hand a finished design to an SEO person, or vice versa. The same people decide the structure, the words and the look, so the site works as one thing.

  2. 02 /

    Small on purpose

    A handful of projects at a time. You talk to the person doing the work, and that person has time to do it properly.

  3. 03 /

    Evidence over opinion

    Search data, analytics and real customer behaviour decide what goes on a page. Taste decides how it looks. We keep the two separate.

  4. 04 /

    Built to last

    Modern code you own, hosting that scales, no plugin roulette. A site should still be fast and secure in five years without a rebuild.

  5. 05 /

    Plain English

    If we cannot explain what we are doing and why in a sentence, we are not doing it. Reports are short and written for people who run businesses.

  6. 06 /

    Local, actually

    We live and work here. We know which roads flood, which retail parks are dead and which trades are booked up till Christmas. That knowledge ends up in the work.

03 / Who you'll work with

One founder.
No account managers.

Chris Carswell

Chris Carswell is the founder of Stourbridge Web Studio, with more than 25 years’ experience building technology businesses, software products and digital platforms. His background spans web development, SaaS, AI, technical operations and commercial growth, with a particular focus on turning complex technology into useful products that deliver measurable results. He spent ten years as a co-founder of a national home services business, where between 2015 and 2025 he created and managed advertising campaigns accounting for more than £10 million of spend across Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, and he runs paid search and social advertising for studio clients today. That experience mostly informs the advice to stop: the studio leads with the channels a business owns rather than the ones it rents. Today, he combines hands-on development with design, SEO and product strategy to help businesses build a stronger presence online.

Rightio’s company article names Chris as a co-owner and describes the business reaching £15 million in turnover.

Sunrise Software’s service definition (PDF, page 5) quotes Chris on the origins of its Solvyr AI tools, identifying him as Technical Operations Manager at Sunrise.

Based
Stourbridge, DY8
Working across
The Black Country, Worcestershire, West Midlands
Specialism
Web design, development, SEO and local search. Paid advertising where it earns its place.
Delivery
No outsourcing. Your project is handled directly from start to finish.
04 / Process

No mysterious
agency process.

Six stages. Each one has a start, an end and something you can see.

  1. 01 /Talk

    A proper conversation about your business, your customers and what a better website has to do.

  2. 02 /Plan

    Search research, page structure and a written scope. You know what you are getting before we start.

  3. 03 /Design

    Art direction first, then real pages. Typography, layout and content designed together.

  4. 04 /Build

    Hand-coded, fast and accessible. Tested on real phones, not just a resized browser.

  5. 05 /Launch

    Redirects, analytics, Search Console, schema and a launch checklist we actually follow.

  6. 06 /Grow

    Content, local SEO and measurement so the site keeps earning its keep after launch.

Elsewhere

Contact

Let's build
something better.

Start a project

Or just email

hello@stourbridgewebstudio.co.uk