A few specific fixes for marlborough-law.com
Marlborough Law · Hungerford, serving West Berkshire and Wiltshire · website rebuild
I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see the work is leaving good clients on the table. Spent an hour on the live marlborough-law.com on a phone and a laptop and pulled the 2018 Legal Futures piece on Karen and Alex while I was there. Three things stood out: the single most distinctive thing about the practice (Bar Standards Board regulation, not SRA) is mentioned nowhere on the homepage, the Charnham Lane address is spelled two different ways on the same site, and the brand still leads with Marlborough while the Marlborough office is paused. This document is the three findings in detail, then a working rebuild at the same URL one click away.
What an hour on the live site surfaced
The single most distinctive thing about the firm is mentioned nowhere on the homepage.
What I sawMarlborough Law is regulated by the Bar Standards Board, not the SRA. Per the 2018 Legal Futures piece that broke the story, the firm was the first solicitor-led practice in the UK to take this route without a barrister on the books, and Alex Atkins is on record that BSB regulation is "much more practical and proportionate" than the SRA alternative. Nothing on marlborough-law.com tells a visitor any of this. The accreditation strip on the homepage shows a Civil Mediation badge and a Resolution badge, both correct, but the BSB-regulated framing that materially changes how a client is billed (monthly invoicing, no client money upfront, free initial consultation) is invisible. The Legal Futures article is not linked anywhere on the site.
Why it mattersEvery other solicitor in the Hungerford-Marlborough-Newbury corridor sells on heritage, size, or specialism. Marlborough Law has a genuinely different regulatory and commercial structure, and that structure is the reason a divorcing partner can have a Form E consultation before anything goes on the clock. Hiding it removes the one thing the firm has that none of the incumbents do.
What the rebuild doesThe rebuild puts a one-line "Bar Standards Board regulated" mark in the utility bar above the wordmark, a "How we are different" panel directly under the hero that names the BSB framing, the monthly billing, the free consultation and the no-client-money structure in three sentences, a dedicated FAQ entry that links out to the Legal Futures article, and a Person + LegalService JSON-LD block that surfaces both the BSB authorisation and Karen and Alex as named directors. Search and a forwarded WhatsApp link both pick up the differentiator instead of burying it.
The same office address is spelled two different ways on the same site.
What I sawThe homepage contact block writes the head office as "Merlin House, Charnam Lane, Hungerford." Karen's own blog post about the move ("A new chapter for Marlborough Law") writes "Charnham Lane." Royal Mail and Companies House both list "Charnham Lane." The "Charnam" spelling appears in the persistent contact strip on the home page and the contact page, so a client copying the address into a sat-nav or Google Maps from where the firm tells them to copy it lands on a different street name than the one the postcode resolves to.
Why it mattersThis is the kind of detail a first-time client notices on a phone, on a Wednesday evening, deciding whether to send a sensitive enquiry to this firm or the one down the road. Two spellings of a single street name on the same site reads as inattention. The cost is invisible because no one writes in to complain, they just close the tab.
What the rebuild doesThe rebuilt site reads "Charnham Lane" everywhere, has the canonical address in a single data object that powers the header utility strip, the footer, the visit section, and the JSON-LD Postal Address block at once, and ships a working embedded Google Maps tile pinned to the real RG17 0EY postcode so the visitor can confirm visually before they leave.
The brand still leads with Marlborough but the Marlborough office is paused.
What I sawThe homepage tells visitors "we operate out of our brand new office in Charnam Lane on the edge of Hungerford" and elsewhere on the site that the Marlborough office has closed and "we are looking for a suitable replacement soon." Meanwhile the firm name, the domain, the title tag ("Marlborough Law Solicitors in Hungerford and Marlborough"), and the meta description all lead with Marlborough. A visitor searching "solicitor Marlborough" lands on a page that promises a Marlborough presence the operations footnote then takes away.
Why it mattersThe Hungerford and Marlborough catchments overlap but are not the same. A Marlborough resident clicks a Marlborough-named brand and finds out three scrolls in that the office is in Hungerford. That dissonance is fine if the page reframes the firm as a Hungerford-led practice that also serves Marlborough by video and on-the-road meetings, and not fine if the page tries to pretend the Marlborough office is still there. The honest version converts; the inherited version costs leads quietly.
What the rebuild doesThe rebuilt header reads "Hungerford, serving West Berkshire and Wiltshire," with a single calm line in the hero acknowledging that the Marlborough office is paused and explaining how the firm reaches Marlborough clients today (free Hungerford parking, video consultations, and home visits where the matter warrants). Page titles and Open Graph cards lead with Hungerford. The Marlborough name stays in the brand because the firm is named that, but the geography is told honestly.
One price, no retainer
£2,000 Fixed for the rebuild, one-off. £150 Per month for hosting and ongoing care. £50 Optional. Embedded chatbot trained on the firm's FAQs and practice areas.
No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.
- • One round of revisions before launch
- • DNS cutover handled (you keep marlborough-law.com in your name)
- • 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
- • Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)
If the proposal lands, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days for a video call. I take on three West Berkshire and Wiltshire builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 4 June, the proposal site comes down.
See the live rebuild ↗ A working preview you can click through · opens in a new tab