On A Phone
What This Reader Needs
- A Page That Loads Fast
- Buttons That Work One-Handed
- Who You Are, Up Front
Website Design Across Greater Nottingham
More than half of greater Nottingham lives outside the city. On Valacia, our website platform, your website can lead with Beeston, Arnold or the city, whichever wins you customers.
Coming Soon Try it free for fourteen days, no billing info required. Then starting from £18 a month.
- The Built-Up AreaAbout 720,000 people at the 2021 census
- Wording You SetSay Nottingham, Beeston or both
- Your Own Domain On ProRegistered to you, on the £18 plan
- Beeston To Hucknall
- Fast On The Tram
- New Students Every September
Catchment
The City On The Map Is Not The City You Sell To
Nottingham is one of England's most tightly bounded cities. The gap between the council area and the built-up area is not a rounding error. It is most of your market.
- 320,000Council AreaA little over, inside the city boundary
- 720,000Built-Up AreaAbout, across the whole built-up area
People, at the 2021 census.
Those extra people live in places with their own names and their own councils. Beeston sits in Broxtowe, Carlton and Arnold in Gedling, West Bridgford in Rushcliffe, and Hucknall in Ashfield, at the northern end of tram line one.
Carry on south-west and the same built-up area crosses into Derbyshire at Long Eaton and Ilkeston.
A firm in Beeston or West Bridgford has a real decision to make: present as Nottingham, or as its own town. On Valacia that decision is yours. You set the wording and the service area in Valacia Studio, and you change them whenever the answer changes.
The towns further out are covered on the Nottinghamshire page, and Long Eaton and Ilkeston on the Derbyshire page. A training provider taking each September's intake online, or a supplier giving its hospital buyers a portal of their own, has a job for software: a custom SaaS application, built to order.
Who Is Reading
An Audience That Turns Over Every September
Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham teach more than 60,000 students between them, and the city's population is far younger than England's as a whole.
That changes what a website has to be good at. It has to be quick on a phone on a real mobile network. Forms and buttons have to work one-handed. And it cannot assume the reader already knows who you are, because a large part of the audience arrives new every September.
Valacia websites are made to load fast on a phone, on the tram as well as on fibre. Nobody has to wait for a picture to find your opening hours.
Seasonality
Term Dates Are Your Season
The trading year here is set by the academic calendar: freshers, terms, the exam season, the city emptying in July. Then Goose Fair arrives on the Forest Recreation Ground in early October, one of the country's oldest and largest travelling fairs and a real autumn spike in demand.
In a year shaped like that, the content that matters most is the content that changes: opening hours, intake dates, seasonal offers and availability. On Valacia you change them yourself, on any device, the day they move. What you change every term should never be the expensive part of owning a website.
The Trading Year Here
- September
- Freshers arrive
- Early October
- Goose Fair
- Term Time
- Hours and intakes
- July
- The city empties
Regulated Readers
Healthcare Buyers Check What You Claim
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust employs around 20,000 people and is the largest employer in Nottinghamshire. Its major trauma centre is at the Queen's Medical Centre.
If your firm sells into that world, the people reading its website check what it says. In a clinical or regulated supply chain, failing an accessibility check can cost a place on the shortlist. Every claim has to be one you can substantiate, and an unevidenced health claim is a liability.
Clear words, in a sensible order, with no claim hidden in an image, serve the procurement reader. They also serve the student on a cracked phone screen in the rain.
Supplier Assessment
What A Procurement Reader Checks Before Replying
Two universities and one of the country's largest acute trusts buy through formal processes. If your firm supplies them, your website is part of the supplier assessment, whether it was written for that or not.
On Paper
Who You Are On Paper
Your registered company name and number, your registered office and a route to a person. A Valacia website shows the first three in the footer of every page, as the law requires, and a buyer who cannot verify you quickly moves on.
Valacia Terms, clause 3.2
Hosting
Where The Website Runs
On Google Cloud. Your pages and enquiries sit behind a wall built so that no other business on Valacia can reach them. You decide who signs in, and Google Cloud's own security services check every sign-in.
Valacia Terms, clause 9.2
Enquiries
Where Each Enquiry Goes
You get each one by email, Valacia Studio shows which page it came from, and it is kept while your plan is active and for two years after it ends, unless you delete it sooner. Supplier questionnaires ask exactly this.
Valacia Terms, clauses 3.3, 6.9 and 10.1
That is the difference between a questionnaire you can answer in an afternoon and one that stalls for a fortnight while somebody works out where the website is hosted.
Performance
Photograph-Heavy Websites That Load Fast
The Lace Market is a quarter-mile square of red-brick Victorian warehouses, once the centre of the world's lace industry, and in 1969 it became Nottingham's first conservation area.
Today it and neighbouring Hockley are full of independent bars, cafés, shops and small creative firms, whose websites depend on photography, menus, bookings and opening hours.
That is a website's hardest test: a page full of photographs, opened on a phone by someone in the street deciding where to go next. A fast global content delivery network (CDN) brings every Valacia page to that phone quickly. The rest is down to what you put on it: keep the photographs to your best work and the hours in words.
Getting There
If Customers Arrive By Tram
Nottingham Express Transit runs two tram lines and around twenty miles of track. A page that leads with the nearest stop and the walk from it is more useful to those customers than one that leads with parking.
What It Costs
The Plans And What They Cost
Every figure is published, and you pay the same in Beeston as in the city centre.
Two Plans
Pro
£18/Month
Or £198 /Year, one month free
Your own domain and enquiry forms, with everyone who contacts you kept in one place. A Beeston firm can present itself as Nottingham on a web address it owns.
Recommended
Business
£59/Month
Or £649 /Year, one month free
A Lace Market bar can take paid table bookings, and a training course its September intake, each confirmed by email.
Business also links to your till, lets you send marketing email and gives two members of your team a Site Seat each.
Before you choose, everything in Business is yours for fourteen days on a valacia.site address. Either plan then puts a customer relationship management (CRM) system behind your website. Leaving a monthly plan costs nothing.
Both prices are in pounds sterling, with nothing added on top.
Valacia asks about your firm and sets up the website. The parts only you know, such as which town to lead with and when term starts, are yours to write, and you change them in Valacia Studio whenever they move. We host it on Google Cloud and monitor the platform ourselves, freshers' week included.
Enquiries come in on either plan, and Business adds bookings, with a deposit if you want one. Tradespeople can go straight to websites for service businesses.
Common Questions
Questions About Nottingham Websites
Should My Website Say Nottingham Or Say Beeston?
It depends on who buys from you. The Nottingham built-up area takes in Beeston, Carlton, Arnold, West Bridgford and Hucknall, each under a different council, so a business there can fairly claim either name.
If most customers come in from the city, lead with Nottingham and name your own town clearly. If you trade on being the local firm, do the opposite. Either way, the wording is yours to set and to change.
How Should A Website Serve Students Without Losing Everyone Else?
Build for a phone on a real mobile network first, and do not assume the reader knows who you are. A large part of that audience is new to the city every September. Obvious buttons and a page that loads fast help them, and they cost older or less confident visitors nothing.
Can I Change Term Dates And Opening Hours Myself?
Yes, from any device, on either plan. Intake dates and seasonal offers go live as soon as you set them, and you wait for nobody.
Why Do Nottingham Suppliers Keep Being Asked About Accessibility?
A firm that sells into healthcare, life sciences or higher education meets the question in supplier assessment. With an NHS trust of around 20,000 people and two large universities in one city, a local supplier may well sit in a chain where accessibility is part of the check.
Put your claims in words, in a clear order, and make each one something you can evidence.
Do You Cover The Rest Of Nottinghamshire?
Yes. Mansfield, Worksop, Sutton-in-Ashfield and the north of the county are on the Nottinghamshire page, and Long Eaton and Ilkeston, inside the built-up area but over the border, are on the Derbyshire page.
The terms are the same wherever you are: a 14-day free trial, then Pro at £18 a month or Business at £59 a month.
Greater Nottingham
Sell To All Of Nottingham
Nottingham, Beeston or both: the wording is yours, and you can change it as your customers change.
- Term Dates Up The Same Day
- Bookings And Payments On Business
- Cancel A Monthly Plan Any Time