About
A studio, and the 15 years behind it.
Smarter Sites is a digital studio in Northwich, Cheshire. We design and build websites, client portals, automation and AI tools, and run the paid media behind them, for growing businesses across the UK and worldwide.
The studio
Websites are where we start, not where we stop.
Smarter Sites began as a web design and paid media service. Over time the most valuable work turned out to be the systems sitting behind the website: the client portal, the automation that removes a manual process, the tool that joins up a team.
So we repositioned. Today we are a digital studio that builds websites, tools, and the systems that run behind them. Our websites are static builds on our own tooling, hosted on Cloudflare, and we only build on WordPress when a client specifically asks for it.
We work with growing businesses that need to trust a studio with something their business will run on. Websites start from £1,200, and software builds usually land between £5,000 and £25,000.
Every project gets senior attention, from the first call to launch and after it. Our own AI tooling does the heavy lifting, so the work moves at the pace of a much larger agency, and you speak directly to whoever is building it rather than an account manager relaying messages.
What we believe
How we approach the work.
Evidence over adjectives
We lead with named clients and real outcomes, not buzzwords. If we cannot prove it, we will not claim it.
Built to fit
We shape the build around how your business actually works, rather than bending your process to fit an off-the-shelf tool.
You own it
The systems we build belong to you. No per-seat lock-in, no content trapped on someone else's platform.
Here after launch
We host, maintain and keep improving what we build as the business changes. We are in it for the long relationship.
Nathan McDonald
Founder, Smarter Sites
The experience behind the studio
Fifteen years building marketing and the systems that make it convert.
Smarter Sites is led by Nathan McDonald, who has spent 15 years in digital marketing and web development, much of it in financial services. He has run six-figure paid media budgets, led in-house teams and managed agencies, and built the automation and AI systems that make campaigns convert.
That includes AI chatbots that qualify leads, automation that recovers revenue from lost enquiries, and live reporting dashboards. The same approach now sits behind every Smarter Sites project: marketing and software treated as one system, not two separate jobs. Much of his earlier web work was on WordPress.
Earlier in his career at Gladstone Brookes, a household name in PPI, he managed an £800k monthly paid media budget, grew the team from two to eight, and recovered the brand's search rankings after a Google penalty by auditing and disavowing over 100,000 backlinks, reaching number one for the term "PPI" within six months.
Selected work
Recent builds.
A mix of client projects and our own products. See the full picture on the work page.
Tree surgery & grounds maintenance
A field-service platform and customer portal that replaced paper, phone calls and spreadsheets, with AI-audited photo proof on every visit.
Sales & marketing
A sales portal they own outright, replacing a per-seat tool, with full visibility of how each prospect engages. It runs on WordPress.
Our own product
Broker Finder, a blind comparison platform for choosing a mortgage broker, with scheduling, CRM integration and an LTV calculator.
Let's build something your business can run on.
Book a 30 minute discovery call. We will tell you whether we can help and what it would take.
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Every enquiry gets a reply within one working day. Or call us free on 0800 208 8035.