About
Smarter Sites is a founder-led 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
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. We work with growing businesses making a considered investment, usually between £5,000 and £25,000, who need to trust a studio with something their business will run on.
We keep the team small and the work direct. You speak to the person building your project, not an account manager relaying messages.
What we believe
We lead with named clients and real outcomes, not buzzwords. If we cannot prove it, we will not claim it.
We shape the build around how your business actually works, rather than bending your process to fit an off-the-shelf tool.
The systems we build belong to you. No per-seat lock-in, no content trapped on someone else's platform.
We host, maintain and keep improving what we build as the business changes. We are in it for the long relationship.
The experience behind the studio
Nathan McDonald
Founder, Smarter Sites
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, live reporting dashboards, and custom WordPress plugins. The same approach now sits behind every Smarter Sites project: marketing and software treated as one system, not two separate jobs.
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
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 WordPress sales portal they own outright, replacing a per-seat tool, with full visibility of how each prospect engages.
Our own product
Broker Finder, a blind comparison platform for choosing a mortgage broker, with scheduling, CRM integration and an LTV calculator.
Book a 30 minute discovery call. We will tell you whether we can help and what it would take.