Proposal · prepared for Marston Barrett · 25 May 2026

A few specific fixes for marstonbarrett.co.uk.

Marston Barrett · Lewes, East Sussex · website rebuild

I rebuild small-business websites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table. Three things stood out on marstonbarrett.co.uk on mobile: the green and gold fascia opposite Lewes Castle, the 42-year custodianship from Henry Marston Barrett through Robert Barrett to Andrew Glaysher FGA, and the absence of any structured data telling Google or AI assistants that this is a 1938-founded FGA-credentialled Lewes institution. The three findings below explain each, then a working rebuild you can click through.

Open live preview ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal

72 High Street · Lewes · since 1938

The green and gold fascia opposite the Castle, finally on the homepage. Open the live preview ↗

Shopfront photograph · Christien Michaels for Accidentally Wes Anderson

The green and gold fascia, opposite the Castle, is invisible online.

What I saw: The shopfront at 72 High Street is a Wes Anderson selection. Christien Michaels photographed it for the Accidentally Wes Anderson directory under the tag "Classic Facades, Green." Bottle-green Victorian shopfront, gilt "Marston Barrett Ltd" letterforms, three lit cabinet panels reading WATCHES, JEWELLERY, CLOCKS. The current marstonbarrett.co.uk homepage opens on Shopify default product slides instead.

Why it matters: The fascia and the Lewes Castle backdrop are the strongest physical brand assets the business owns. A first-time visitor weighing Marston Barrett against a Bond Street antique jeweller or an online auction listing decides on physical-place credibility in the first scroll. The current homepage cedes that ground completely. Customers travelling to Lewes for the antique-quarter trade cannot recognise the shop from its own homepage.

What the rebuild does: After rebuild: the shopfront photo is the homepage hero, cropped tight on the bay window and the gilt lettering. The "opposite the 11th-century Lewes Castle" line sits in the eyebrow above the H1. A "72 High Street" plate runs in the utility bar. The shop a customer walks past is the same shop they meet online.

42 years at the bench, three generations of custodianship, none of it on the homepage.

What I saw: Henry Marston Barrett purchased the building in 1938 and worked in the shop until the age of 85. His son Robert Barrett FGA joined in 1966. The shop is now largely run by Andrew J. Glaysher FGA, who joined as a trainee in 1984 and has been there 42 years. The story is on /pages/about, three clicks deep from the homepage. None of the three names appears on the front page.

Why it matters: Antique jewellery and probate valuations are pure-trust purchases. A customer placing a £4,000 Edwardian ring on the counter, or asking the shop to value a deceased relative's collection, is buying the named person behind the bench. "Andrew Glaysher FGA, 42 years at this shop, 30 years of valuing experience" is the single strongest sentence Marston Barrett owns. It is currently behind a tab.

What the rebuild does: After rebuild: the heritage block runs on the deep bottle-green band the fascia is painted in. Three named people, three dates: 1938 Henry founds the shop (works until 85), 1966 Robert joins, 1984 Andrew joins as a trainee. The line "the shop is now largely run by Andrew Glaysher FGA" leads. Person schema for all three. The custodianship is no longer buried, it is the second-strongest scroll moment on the page.

Shopify Dawn defaults, no LocalBusiness or FAQPage schema.

What I saw: A crawl of the homepage HTML surfaces no JSON-LD structured data. No LocalBusiness or Store schema with the 72 High Street address, the 01273 474150 phone, the Tue-Sat 09:30-17:15 hours, the 1938 founding date or the FGA credential. No Person schema for Andrew Glaysher. No FAQPage on the questions customers actually ask (do you value for probate, do you re-thread pearls, do you engrave family crests, are you open Sundays). The shop is a 4.6-star, 87-year-old Lewes institution that Google reads as a generic Shopify store.

Why it matters: Long-tail queries like "antique jeweller Lewes", "probate valuation East Sussex", "signet ring crest engraving Lewes", "watch repair Lewes High Street", increasingly answer via Google rich snippets and AI assistants reading structured data, not body copy. A Shopify-default jeweller competes against bigger inventory budgets and loses. A jeweller with full LocalBusiness, Person, Service and FAQPage schema and an 87-year founding date competes on its own ground and wins the queries chains cannot answer.

What the rebuild does: After rebuild: full Organization plus LocalBusiness schema with foundingDate 1938, address, geo, opening hours, and the FGA credential. Person schema on Henry Marston Barrett (founder), Robert Barrett FGA, Andrew Glaysher FGA (currentOwner). Service schema on valuations, engraving, antique restoration. FAQPage on the six questions that recur in reviews. AggregateRating from the existing 4.6 / 21 reviews. The shop becomes legible to every system reading structured data.

Pricing

£2,000Fixed for the rebuild. One-off. £150Per month for hosting and ongoing care. £50Optional. Embedded chatbot trained on the FAQs.

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.

• One round of revisions before launch.
• DNS cutover handled. You keep the marstonbarrett.co.uk domain 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 East Sussex builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 4 June 2026, the proposal site comes down.

See the live rebuild ↗

A working preview you can click through.

Opens in this tab · full mobile preview · the shop a customer walks past.