How these were chosen
Local businesses with a scruffy website are easy to find and mostly worth nothing — they have no money and no problem worth solving. These ten were filtered on three things at once:
- Real money. Established independents with fleets, depots, trade customers or stock. Not startups, not one-man bands, not national chains with in-house teams.
- A measurable website problem. Something you can prove in front of them in thirty seconds.
- An operation that a website alone cannot fix. This is the important one. A £1,490 website is a job. A booking system, a trade portal or a hire calendar is a project, and it is where the money is.
The pattern across all ten
Eight of the ten have no working analytics at all, and five of them are still loading Google's old Universal Analytics — which stopped processing data in July 2023. They have been flying blind for three years and mostly do not know it.
That single finding is your way into any of these conversations. It costs nothing to verify, it is impossible to argue with, and it makes everything else you say credible.
8
With no working analytics
5
Still loading dead Universal Analytics
6
With no H1 on the homepage
The ten
BusinessFamily-run since 1966, same family throughout. Describes a fleet of over 300 vehicles including welfare vans for construction sites. Liverpool's main independent vehicle hire operation.
MoneyVerified at Companies House (no. 01989052). Accounts to 31 July 2025: £284,053 cash at bank, £228,059 debtors, net assets £232,705, retained earnings up £34,634 on the year. Profitable and liquid.
Site faultsStill loading dead Universal Analytics, no GA4. Not a single tel: link on the whole homepage — a phone-first business where nobody on a mobile can tap to call. No structured data, no Open Graph.
The buildFleet availability and online hire booking. Three hundred vehicles and not one of them can be reserved online. Pick a date range, see what's free, book it, pay the deposit, e-sign the hire agreement, upload licence and proof of address. Every one of those steps is currently a phone call and a paper form.
£12,000 – £22,000 + £400/mo
BusinessBuilders merchant established 1987 by local builders, selling to trade and public. Stock-heavy, credit-account driven.
MoneyBuilders merchants run on volume and trade credit. Their own site already advertises trade accounts, quote requests and stock availability — the tell that there is an account book behind it.
Site faultsWordPress 7.0.4 loading dead Universal Analytics and no GA4. No H1 on the homepage. Images are lazy-loaded (credit where due) but the sampled set still runs over 1.1 MB.
The buildTrade account portal. Builders merchants live and die on credit accounts, and almost all of them run on phone orders and paper statements. Account login, agreed pricing per customer, order history, one-tap reorder, statements and balances, proof of delivery. This is the single most valuable thing you can sell a merchant, and it locks them in for years.
£15,000 – £25,000 + £500/mo
BusinessIndependent family-run tool and plant hire, 26+ years in the trade. Hire-out business with an asset register.
MoneyPlant hire is capital-heavy — the kit on the yard is the balance sheet. Recurring trade customers on repeat hires.
Site faultsThe cleanest open goal on this list. No analytics whatsoever — no GA4, not even the dead Universal tag. No meta description, no H1, no structured data. 1.55 MB across eight images with zero lazy loading, including a single 907 KB slider image.
The buildHire availability calendar plus compliance records. What's free this week, book it, hire agreement, off-hire request. Then the part they'll actually pay for:
PAT testing and LOLER thorough-examination records tied to each asset, with automatic reminders. Hire firms get audited on exactly this and most track it in a spreadsheet.
£8,000 – £16,000 + £350/mo
BusinessWell-established family-run transport company, supplying vehicles to the area for over 30 years. Coaches and buses — school trips, corporate, events.
MoneyA coach fleet is millions in assets. School and corporate contracts are repeat, high-value bookings.
Site faults⭐ They do not currently have a website. The domain serves a 5.9 KB placeholder that says "We're on our way......." and nothing else — no phone number, no contact form, no meta description, no analytics. Separately, http:// serves the page without redirecting to https://.
The buildApproach this one first. A holding page means they already know they need a site and someone has either let them down or is taking too long. There is no incumbent to displace and no "our current site is fine" objection to overcome. Sell the website, then the quote-and-booking engine: journey details in, price out, deposit paid, vehicle and driver assigned.
£3,500 website, then £9,000 – £18,000 + £400/mo
BusinessSupplies kitchen equipment and appliances to bars, restaurants and cafés across the region. Sells and services.
MoneyCommercial kitchen kit is high-value stock with service contracts attached — the recurring revenue is in maintenance, not the sale.
Site faultsWordPress 7.0.4 running GA4 and dead Universal Analytics at the same time — a classic half-finished migration, so their numbers are a mess. 1.68 MB across the sampled images including a 478 KB PNG. Good news: 40 lazy-loaded images and a WhatsApp link already, so they're receptive.
The buildTrade ordering plus service contract management. Restaurant customers reordering consumables and parts on account, and — the real money —
planned maintenance scheduling: which fryer in which kitchen is due service, engineer assignment, job sheets, certificates. Service contracts are the profitable half of that business and are almost certainly on a wall planner.
£12,000 – £20,000 + £450/mo
6
You already know this one
BusinessFamily-run waste management since 1986, skip hire and grab wagons, serving builders merchants across the North West. Own fleet.
MoneySame model as Cheadle Skip Hire, but with a B2B builders-merchant customer base on top — which means contracts, not one-off skips.
Site faultsThe best of this bunch, in fairness: GA4 is live, structured data present, five tel: links. But no H1 on the homepage, zero lazy loading across 590 KB of sampled images, and despite "book" and "quote" language throughout there is no actual online booking — every job is a phone call.
The buildRun the Cheadle Skips playbook. You will already have the whole argument rehearsed. Online booking with payment, automatic waste transfer notes by email, and for the merchant customers a
trade portal — site addresses, standing orders, consolidated monthly invoicing. Mention Cheadle only if you've won it; never name one prospect to another before that.
£9,000 – £16,000 + £400/mo
BusinessIndependent self storage, main Liverpool site opened 2002, Knowsley Business Park off the M57/M58. Domestic, business and student storage.
MoneySelf storage is pure recurring revenue — every unit is a monthly subscription. High margin once the building is up, which makes software spend easy to justify.
Site faultsAn old hand-built site on .php URLs. Dead Universal Analytics, no GA4. No meta description, no structured data, no Open Graph. 683 KB of images with zero lazy loading. The page talks about availability but there is no way to check it.
The buildUnit availability, online reservation and recurring billing. See which sizes are free, reserve one, sign the licence agreement, set up a Direct Debit, done — the whole competitive advantage the national chains have over independents. Add automated arrears chasing and it pays for itself on late payments alone.
£10,000 – £18,000 + £400/mo
BusinessIndependent vets in Kirkby — increasingly rare, as most UK practices have been bought by corporate groups. Independence is exactly why they can still make their own software decisions.
MoneyVeterinary practices run health plans — monthly subscriptions for vaccinations, flea and worm treatment. Recurring revenue with a genuine admin burden behind it.
Site faultsWordPress with Elementor. Google's Site Kit plugin is installed but no GA4 tag is actually firing — someone started the job and never finished. No H1. 1.83 MB across ten images with zero lazy loading, including a 559 KB PNG of a pet photo.
The buildAppointment booking and client portal. Book a consult online, repeat prescription requests, vaccination and health-plan reminders by text, pet records the owner can actually see. Every one of those is currently a phone call at 8:30am when the line is jammed. Reminders alone reduce no-shows, which is a number you can put in front of them.
£8,000 – £15,000 + £350/mo
BusinessOver 20 years in garment printing, sublimation and embroidery across Liverpool and Merseyside. Sells to businesses kitting out staff.
MoneyWorkwear is repeat B2B — the same company comes back every time it hires someone. Order values are decent and the customer relationship is long.
Site faultsDead Universal Analytics, no GA4. Running jQuery 2.1.0, released 2014. Two H1s on one page.
The buildArtwork and reorder portal. The pain in this trade is specific and universal: logo files emailed back and forth, and
size grids — 4 smalls, 11 mediums, 6 XLs, three different garments, all agreed over email and retyped by hand. A portal that stores the customer's approved logo and lets them reorder against a saved size grid removes most of the admin in the business. Very easy to demo, very easy to sell.
£7,000 – £13,000 + £300/mo
BusinessAccess platform hire — cherry pickers and mobile elevating work platforms — with a modern maintained fleet.
MoneyMEWPs are expensive machines on high day rates. Utilisation is everything, which is precisely what software improves.
Site faultsBuilt on Wix, which caps what anyone can do with it. 929 KB of HTML on a single page. No GA4, no H1. The page uses the words "booking" and "availability" but neither exists as a function.
The buildHire booking plus statutory compliance records. MEWPs need
LOLER thorough examinations every 6 months and it is a legal requirement, not a nicety. A system that tracks each machine's next inspection date, stores the certificates, and blocks a machine from being hired out when its examination has lapsed is worth real money — because the alternative is a spreadsheet and an accident waiting to happen.
£9,000 – £16,000 + £350/mo
The evidence, side by side
Everything below was measured on the live sites on 16 August 2026. Take this table into meetings.
"Images sampled" is the transfer size of up to fourteen images referenced in the homepage HTML, not the full page weight — so the real numbers are higher, not lower. "Dead UA" means the page still loads Google's analytics.js, which has collected nothing since July 2023.
How to price custom software
This is the part that is genuinely different from selling websites, and getting it wrong in either direction loses the deal.
Three rules that matter more than the numbers
1. Always sell discovery first. Never quote a build from a conversation. Discovery is paid, it is small enough to approve without a board meeting, and it means you quote the build knowing what you're quoting. It also filters out tyre-kickers instantly.
2. Phase it. Nobody signs £20,000 with someone they met last month. They will sign £1,500, then £9,000, then the rest.
3. The monthly fee is not negotiable and not separate. Custom software without support becomes a liability the day something breaks. Quote it as part of the build, never as an add-on they can decline.
Two things to sort before you take money
Do this before the first invoice, not after
Nobody has decided who the contracting party is. If you close one of these and the client pays, that money has a tax home and that contract has a legal home. The three options are: you as a UK sole trader, a UK limited company, or Web Express in Peru invoicing directly. They have very different consequences and the sensible starting point is usually sole trader — cheap, reversible, no Companies House filings.
Andrés has this covered on his side now: we've built two advisors into the system, one for England & Wales law (contracts, UK GDPR, ICO, chasing unpaid invoices) and one for HMRC (sole trader vs limited company, VAT threshold, Self Assessment, what to set aside from every payment). Ask him to run anything through them before you sign or invoice.
Two specifics worth knowing right now, both of which apply from the very first job:
- Never put VAT on an invoice until you are registered. Charging it before registration is illegal and it is the single most common beginner mistake. The registration threshold is turnover-based over a rolling twelve months — verify the current figure before relying on it.
- Get a contract in place before starting work, with the scope, what is not included, payment milestones, and a clause saying intellectual property transfers on final payment. English law also lets you charge statutory interest on late commercial payments — but only really works when it's written down.
Find more of these yourself
The method is repeatable and takes about ten minutes per prospect.
- Pick a sector that hires, stocks or schedules something. Hire firms, merchants, storage, waste, transport, clinics, trade suppliers. Avoid restaurants, hairdressers and retail — small ticket, no software need.
- Filter for independents. "Family run", "established 19xx", "our own fleet". National chains have in-house teams and you will never get in.
- Open the site and check three things: view source and search for
gtag/js?id=G- (no match means no GA4), search for analytics.js (a match means the dead tag), and check whether the thing they sell can actually be booked or ordered online. That third one is the whole opportunity.
- Check the money at Companies House. Search the name at
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk, open the company, go to the filing history and download the most recent accounts. Small companies do not file a profit and loss, but the balance sheet shows cash, debtors and net assets — enough to know whether they can afford you. That is exactly how the Bank View Hire figures above were obtained.
Suggested order of attack
Start with Aintree Coachline. They have a placeholder website, which means they already know they need one and there is no incumbent to argue with. It is the shortest path to a first signed UK job.
Then City Tool & Plant, because the faults are so clear-cut you can demonstrate them from your phone in the doorway. Save Bank View Hire and Jem Centres until you have one finished job to point at — they are the biggest prizes and worth arriving prepared for.
Prepared by Web Express, 16 August 2026. All website measurements were taken from publicly accessible pages. Financial figures for Bank View Hire Limited come from accounts filed publicly at Companies House. Business descriptions are drawn from each company's own website. This is commercial research, not legal, financial or investment advice. All companies are named for identification only and none has any involvement in this document.