An awnings website built to help people choose before they ring

Eight ways to cover a patio, and a buyer who knows none of them

Eclipse have designed, supplied and fitted awnings, louvred roofs and glass verandas across Kent and East Sussex for 23 years, from their base in Faversham. There are eight different ways to cover an outside space, and most people ring up knowing the problem rather than the product. We built a site that sorts that out first, then makes the free survey the easy next step.

Eclipse are not a showroom operation. They survey, they fit, and they have done it for 23 years. The difficulty is the range itself. An awning, a louvred roof, a retractable roof, a glass veranda and a glass room all solve a slightly different version of the same problem, and a homeowner standing on their patio has no reason to know which is which. The site had to teach before it sold.

A range that confuses before it convinces

• Eight separate products, easy for a buyer to muddle
• People know the problem, not the name of the product
• A considered purchase, so trust has to come first
• Nothing online showing the range or the standard of fit
• No simple path from browsing to a booked survey

A range anyone can navigate

• The whole range laid out on one spectrum, shade through to room
• Plain descriptions of what each cover actually does
• Twenty three years in the trade stated up front
• The free survey framed as the next step, with no showroom visit
• Tap to call and message on every screen

A website that answers the question before it asks for the job

This was a web design project with a teaching problem at the heart of it. Every part of the site works to get a homeowner from a vague idea to a confident enquiry.

The whole range on one spectrum. Start with how much weather you want to lose. The range runs from shade on a hot afternoon through to a room you can use in February, so a visitor finds their own situation rather than guessing at product names.

Eight covers, explained plainly. Each cover gets a straight description of what it does, plus the details that decide it: projection, whether it is rain tight closed, the colour options and whether it needs fixing to the building.

A survey, not a sales appointment. No showroom visit and no finance presentation. A look at the space, a written price and a date. That is said plainly, because it is the thing that separates them from the doorstep sellers.

Their own installs, not catalogue shots. The work on the site is their work. When someone is spending real money on something bolted to their house, seeing a finished job locally does more than any promise.

Built for the patio, on a phone. People work this out standing in the garden with a phone in their hand. The site is quick on mobile and keeps the phone number and message button within a thumb’s reach the whole way down.

Found for awnings and verandas in Kent. Titles, descriptions and structured data tell search engines this is an awnings and verandas installer covering Kent and East Sussex, so the right people find them.

Every way there is to cover an outside space

Rather than a product list, the range is presented as a set of answers. Each one says what it does, what it is good for and the one or two specifications that actually decide the choice.

A dark, outdoor look that puts the work first

We designed the site on a deep green canvas so the photography carries it. The pictures are of real installs, and the layout gets out of their way. The result feels established and practical rather than glossy, which suits a business that turns up, measures and fits.

On a phone the range collapses into a list you can thumb through, and the call and message buttons stay in reach the whole way down. Someone can stand on their patio, work out what they want and ring from the same screen.

This is the same thinking we bring to any small business website, and it is the kind of work we do for trades across the towns we cover.

From brief to live, step by step

We started with how people actually buy shade. What they search for, what they call it, and what stops them picking up the phone. The range spectrum, the plain descriptions and the survey flow all came out of that.

1. Listen. We learned the range, the way Jim surveys a job and the questions that come up every week. The way the site explains the products came straight from those answers.

2. Design and write. We designed around their photography and wrote every word, from the range descriptions to the FAQs. They reviewed it and we refined until it sounded like them.

3. Build and launch. A fast, mobile first site with the enquiry flow tested on real phones, then launched on their own domain, ready to take surveys.