Web design in Alfriston for a village that draws visitors.

Alfriston lies in the valley of the River Cuckmere, about four miles north-east of Seaford and just south of the A27. It is old. It appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Alvricestone, meaning “Aelfric’s settlement”, and there are Neolithic long barrows on the Downs above it. For a village of only a few hundred people, it carries an unusual amount of history.

That history is the draw. The Star Inn began as a religious hostel in 1345, built to house monks and pilgrims travelling between Battle Abbey and the shrine of St Richard at Chichester, and it later became a base for a notorious local smuggling gang whose leader was transported to Australia in 1830. St Andrew’s Church, big enough to be known as the Cathedral of the South Downs, stands on the village green, the Tye, beside the river; the Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar and the politician Denis Healey are both buried in its churchyard. And the 14th-century Clergy House was the very first building the National Trust ever bought, back in 1896, a thatched Wealden hall house that still pulls in visitors today.

Add the 15th-century market cross in the square, four old pubs including the Star and the Smugglers’ Inn, and the South Downs Way crossing the Cuckmere here, and you have a village whose businesses live and die by passing trade and by being found before someone arrives. A guest house, a tea room or an inn that does not show up cleanly on a phone search loses that customer to the next one along the valley. That is the gap a good website closes.

The businesses we build for in and around Alfriston are mostly hospitality and independents: inns, tea rooms, guest houses, galleries and small shops, plus the trades and services that keep the valley’s homes running. A clear, quick, well-written site that shows opening times, a menu or a room, and a way to book is worth more here than any amount of clever design nobody reads.

Also covering: Litlington, West Dean, Berwick, Wilmington, Seaford, Polegate and the surrounding villages.