Web design that earns trust, reflects your business and gives people a reason to get in touch.

Most websites fail before anyone reads a word. A visitor arrives, takes in the overall impression of the page in a second or two, and makes a judgment about whether this is a business worth engaging with. That judgment is based almost entirely on how the site looks and feels — the typography, the spacing, the colour, the sense of whether someone has thought carefully about this or just filled in a template.

Good web design is not decoration. It is the thing that determines whether a visitor stays or leaves, whether they trust what they are reading, and whether they take the action the site is trying to get them to take. A well-designed site does not just look better than a poorly designed one. It performs better.

The work I do treats design and function as the same thing. A site that looks right but does not convert is not a well-designed site. A site that converts but creates the wrong impression is not a well-designed site either. The goal is a site that does both — that represents your business accurately, builds the right kind of trust, and moves visitors toward the outcome you actually need.

What this involves

Every project starts with a clear picture of what the site needs to achieve, who it needs to serve, and what success looks like in measurable terms. Design decisions follow from that, not from personal preference or trend.

Visual identity and brand application

Whether you have an existing brand that needs to be applied consistently online or you are starting from scratch, the design work begins with understanding what your business stands for and how that should translate visually. Typography, colour, spacing and imagery are chosen deliberately, not assembled from defaults.

UX and page structure

How a page is structured determines what a visitor pays attention to and what they do next. Every page is designed with a clear hierarchy — what the visitor needs to understand first, second and third — and a natural path toward the action the page is designed to prompt.

Responsive design

Every site is designed to work correctly across all devices. Mobile is not an afterthought or a stripped-down version of the desktop site. Both experiences are designed intentionally and tested properly.

Design and development together

Design and development are handled by the same person. There is no handoff between a designer who produces visuals and a developer who interprets them — what is designed is what gets built, without the usual round of compromises and approximations that happen when the two disciplines are separated.

Performance

A well-designed site that loads slowly is not a well-designed site. Performance is built in from the start — optimised images, clean code, correct caching — not bolted on at the end. markexcell.co.uk achieves a perfect 100/100 Core Web Vitals score on both mobile and desktop.

Search visibility

Design decisions affect search visibility. Page structure, heading hierarchy, semantic HTML, internal linking and page speed all influence how search engines understand and rank a site. These considerations are built into the design process rather than addressed as a separate concern after the site is live.

Who this is for

This work suits businesses at a particular point — where the website is either holding them back or where they recognise that a better-designed site would meaningfully change how they are perceived and how many enquiries they receive. The clients I work with best are typically:

Businesses whose current site no longer reflects what they actually do or the standard they hold themselves to.

Professional services firms, consultancies and specialists where first impressions carry significant commercial weight.

Businesses that have had a site built before and found that the result did not quite match what they had in mind, usually because design and development were treated as separate concerns.

Founders and business owners who want to be genuinely involved in the design process rather than presented with something finished and asked to approve it.

If you are not sure whether a full redesign is what you need or whether targeted improvements would achieve more, that is worth talking through before committing to anything. A short conversation usually makes it clear which approach makes sense.

"Pennies from Heaven can highly recommend Mark to any company wanting to grow or expand its reach. We have always been impressed by the very high-quality work we have received and in particular the focus on security."

Kate Frost, CEO, Pennies from Heaven

Let's talk about what your site needs to do

A conversation about your business, your current site and what you are trying to achieve is the right starting point. From there it becomes clear relatively quickly what the right approach looks like and whether there is a good fit.

Start a conversation