Scroll previewSelling firewood online is harder than it looks. The price changes with the cubic metre, delivery is free or charged depending on what you spend and how far you are, and the VAT is 5% on the logs but 20% on the man who barrows them round the back. Get any of that wrong and the customer is annoyed or HMRC is.
What was actually wrong with the old site?
Every product page said the same thing. The old WooCommerce shop carried the same three tabs on all fourteen products — where we deliver, purchase options, and a 650-word delivery guide — word for word each time. That is roughly 11,000 words of duplicate content across a small shop, and it meant fourteen pages competing with each other for the same searches.
The rest of it was the ordinary damage a shop picks up over years:
Lee also told us plainly that he was nervous about WordPress security, and that he never logs into a CMS. He would rather send a WhatsApp than edit a product.
- Dropdowns with one option in them, so customers thought the page was broken
- Products still listed that Lee had stopped stocking
- Lifestyle photographs the previous developer had not licensed
- A claim that all the timber was FSC-certified, which was not accurate
- The same Ready to Burn certificate number on every product, when there are two
Why we built it without WordPress
Because nothing about this business needed a database. Orders live in Stripe. Lee gets an email with the postcode, the volume, the access notes and when the customer is free, then rings them to agree a day. That is the whole data layer.
Moving to a static site with a server-side checkout removed the things he was worried about rather than defending them:
We also wrote him a plain-English explanation of all of it, because "trust us, it is safer" is not an answer.
- No admin login page for anyone in the world to find
- No database holding his customers
- No plugins to keep patched, and nothing to patch at all
- Card details never touch the site — payment happens on Stripe’s own page
- Price changes are one line of data and a thirty-second deploy
How we handled pricing that changes by volume, distance and VAT rate
We moved every calculation to the server so nobody can edit a price in their browser. The basket sends only the product, the option and the quantity. Every figure is worked out from a price list the customer cannot reach.
The rules the checkout enforces:
The VAT was the fiddly part. Firewood is 5%. Delivery and the barrow-and-stack service are 20%. Lee itemises them separately on his paper invoices, so the online receipt had to match. A £265 stacked load now comes out as £225 at 5% and £40 at 20%, on separate lines, rather than £265 taxed as fuel — which would have under-declared the VAT on every stacked order.
- Logs priced per cubic metre; bags priced per bag
- Inner ring, within eight miles: free delivery over £50, otherwise £12
- Outer ring, eight to fifteen miles: free over £250, otherwise £24
- Beyond fifteen miles: refused with a message and a phone number, not quoted
- Seasoned logs sold from two cubic metres up, enforced in the basket and again on the server
- Out-of-stock products keep their page and their search value, but cannot be bought by any route
Why we built a firewood calculator instead of another FAQ
Because "how much firewood do I need" is the question everybody asks and nobody answers properly. Four questions — stove type, nights a week, hours a night, how long you want it to last — and it returns the cubic metres, how many weeks a load lasts, and what that works out at per evening.
It sits on its own page, written around how people actually search, with a banded quick-answer table, an explanation of loose versus stacked cubic metres, and ten FAQs marked up as structured data.
No competitor within thirty miles has one.
What nearly went out wrong, and how it was caught
Two things, and one of them the client spotted before we did.
The galleries were contaminated. Several products only had one photograph, so we had padded the galleries to three images each. On a bagged product that is not padding, it is misrepresentation — the Homefire Brazier page was showing a bag of Stoveheat Premium, a product Lee had stopped stocking altogether. We found eight products showing another product’s packaging. We rewrote every gallery to one rule: a product shows its own photographs, or a plain fire with no branding in it, and nothing else. Then we automated it, so the build now fails outright if a gallery contains an image belonging to a different product.
The calculator was quoting the dearest option. Lee read the cost-per-evening figure and asked whether it was based on the bulk bag. It was — £140 for half a cubic metre, which is £280 a cubic metre, against £225 loose tipped. His most expensive format was setting the headline number. We rebased it on the loose price, which took roughly 20% off every figure, and added a line showing what the same wood costs in bags and the difference. So it now does his upselling for him rather than working against him.
We also stripped four unlicensed lifestyle photographs the previous developer had used, and replaced them with licensed ones. That is worth checking on any site you inherit.
How we structured the local SEO for Staffordshire and Derbyshire
Around a delivery radius rather than a county, because that is how the business actually works. Fifteen miles from Uttoxeter, with a free ring at eight.
Five town pages, each written to be worth reading on its own:
Most competitors’ location pages are a list of village names. One nearby merchant lists around three hundred of them on a single page. We took the opposite approach: every town page carries three things that are only true of that town — its own delivery answer, its own ten villages, and something real about delivering there. Burton’s is the DE13 versus DE14 postcode split. Ashbourne’s is narrow gateways and stone barns. Cheadle’s is steep drives and soft ground.
That is Lee’s knowledge of the actual roads, and no competitor can copy it.
The technical work:
Honestly: we do not promise rankings. Nobody can. What we can say is that the site now has 34 pages worth indexing instead of fourteen near-identical ones, the content answers questions people actually type, and the technical work is done properly. Where that lands is up to Google.
- Uttoxeter, ST14 — the home town and the exact-match domain
- Ashbourne, DE6 — inner ring, rural, and a lot of stoves doing real work
- Burton upon Trent, DE13 to DE15 — the largest nearby population, and split across both rings
- Rugeley, WS15 — inner ring, along the edge of Cannock Chase
- Cheadle, ST10 — outer ring, covering Tean and the Churnet Valley
- Unique title and meta description on all 34 pages, none duplicated
- One H1 per page, server-rendered rather than written by JavaScript
- LocalBusiness, Product, BreadcrumbList and FAQPage structured data
- A 301 map from every old WooCommerce URL, including the delisted products, which go to the shop rather than the homepage
- Around 1,300 words of genuine advice across four guides — kiln dried versus seasoned, what wood burns best, where to buy near you, lighting and storing
- The duplicate delivery text replaced with a postcode checker, so the customer gets an answer about their own address instead of reading a village list
How does an enquiry actually reach Lee?
Three ways, and all of them end with a phone call. Firewood is not a business where someone buys and the relationship ends — a load has to be delivered to a specific spot on a specific day, and that gets agreed by voice.
The checkout asks two questions most shops do not: what we should know about access, and when suits you. Narrow entrance, low branch, gravel drive, gate code. That is the information that decides whether a delivery works, and it arrives before the trailer does.
The order confirmation says plainly that paying does not book a slot — the delivery day is arranged by phone. That is honest, and it stops the complaint before it happens.
- Online order — Stripe takes the payment, and Lee gets an email with the postcode, the delivery zone, the cubic metres, the access notes and when the customer is free
- Enquiry form — pre-filled with the product, used for anything priced on request or out of stock
- Phone and WhatsApp — a compact bar across the foot of every mobile page, which slides away as you read and returns as you scroll back
What has the business got now?
About four weeks from the first concept to a build ready to deploy, including two rounds of client review and a full rewrite of the delivery pricing when Lee changed the model.
- 34 pages worth indexing, replacing fourteen that repeated each other
- A checkout that enforces his real delivery rules, minimum quantities, stock and split VAT
- A firewood calculator no local competitor has
- Five town pages that say something true about each town
- A Ready to Burn page that states honestly which products are certified and which are not — because seasoned wood at 25% cannot carry a mark that requires 20%
- Both businesses on one site: firewood in cream and flame, Woodland & Forestry in green, each sending work to the other
- No database, no admin login, no plugins, and nothing to patch
- Price changes made by us from a WhatsApp, in about thirty seconds
Thinking about something similar?
We build websites for trades and small businesses that need to sell something more complicated than a single price.
See our pricing, or tell us about your project. We will tell you honestly whether you need a new site or just a tidy-up.
Message us on WhatsApp — 07725 541812.
- Pricing, in full: whiteskidigital.com/pricing/
- Web design in Uttoxeter: whiteskidigital.com/web-design-uttoxeter/
- Websites for firewood merchants and fuel suppliers: whiteskidigital.com/firewood-merchant-websites/
Frequently asked questions
What does a website like this cost?
Our pricing is fixed: £1,000 for a complete site and £1,500 for everything. Hosting and care is £200 a year. A project with this much commerce logic sits at the top of that range.
How long does it take to build?
About four weeks for a build of this size, including client review. A straightforward brochure site is quicker. What extends it is usually waiting on the client for photographs, prices and sign-off rather than the build itself.
Do you work with businesses across Staffordshire?
Yes. We work with trades and small businesses across Staffordshire and Derbyshire, including Uttoxeter, Burton upon Trent, Stafford, Ashbourne, Rugeley and Cheadle, and out toward Stoke-on-Trent and Derby. Most of our work comes by word of mouth.
Can I see it before I commit?
Yes. We build a homepage preview for £100, which is refundable against the full build if you go ahead. You see the real thing on your own phone before deciding.
Why not just fix the WooCommerce site?
We would have, if the problems had been cosmetic. They were not. The duplicate content was structural, the VAT treatment needed rebuilding whichever platform it sat on, and the client’s main worry was the platform itself. Rebuilding removed the maintenance burden as well as the problems.
How do you stop someone editing the price in their browser?
The browser never sends a price. It sends a product, an option and a quantity, and the server works out what that costs from its own list. We tested it by editing prices in the browser, injecting out-of-stock products, sending a Cornwall postcode and ordering 999 of something. All four were refused.