✿ Lyme Regis · Dorset · on the Jurassic Coast

A few specific fixes for lymebookshop.com.

Proposal prepared for Lyme Regis Bookshop, the independent bookshop at 11 Broad Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset, DT7 3QD. I spent an afternoon on the live site. Three things stood out on mobile. The full rebuild is browsable at /preview/.

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

Address · 11 Broad Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset, DT7 3QD Phone · 01297 442594

✿ 11 Broad Street · Lyme Regis · 40+ years

The independent bookshop on the Jurassic Coast, a pebble's throw from the Cobb. Open the live preview ↗

Current vs proposed

The current Web Smart Media build, against the proposed Astro rebuild.

Two notes on the current site. The homepage loads eleven jQuery plugins on top of Bootstrap 3 and Modernizr 2.6.2 from 2013. The structured-data block on the homepage is missing entirely.

Web stack and gaps, May 2026

Current ↗ lymebookshop.com

Platform: Custom CMS by Web Smart Media (websmartmedia.co.uk)
Front-end: jQuery, Modernizr 2.6.2 (2013), Flexslider, Owl Carousel, Stellar, Magnific Popup, Leaflet, Bootstrap 3
Fonts: Cinzel + Montserrat + Raleway, full 100..900 variable axes, all three loaded synchronously
Hero: Three background-image flexslider slides preloaded eagerly on first paint, 375KB / 320KB / 140KB
Schema: No JSON-LD on any page. No LocalBusiness, no BookStore, no FAQPage, no Organization.
OG card: Twitter card type "summary" (not summary_large_image). og:image is the interior shelves, not the iconic blue shopfront.
Tel link: `callto:01397705931` (Fort William prefix, non-standard protocol) on every page header
Analytics: Google Tag Manager (GTM-T9QNTD7), plus a cookie notice script

Proposed

Framework: Astro static site (Astro 6), zero client JS by default
Hosting: Vercel UK / EU edge, sub-100ms first-byte from Bridport to Bristol
Fonts: Cardo + Inter + JetBrains Mono, three families, discrete weights only (no `opsz`)
Hero: A single real photo of the blue Gothic shopfront at 11 Broad Street, optimised, with the Cobb and the interior surfaced in dedicated sections below
Schema: BookStore + LocalBusiness + FAQPage + Organization, with E.164 phone, full PostalAddress, opening hours, sister-shop sameAs
OG card: summary_large_image, og:image the blue shopfront in 1200x630 absolute URL
Tel link: Single `tel:+441297442594` E.164 across every callable element, rendered from one data source
Analytics: One Plausible script, GTM retired (cookie notice no longer required)

Three findings · specifics from a walk through the live site

What the current build is leaving on the table.

Walk-through of the live lymebookshop.com on 18 May 2026.

01

The H1 reads "welcome to Lyme Regis Bookshop" with a lowercase w.

What I saw: The homepage H1 inside `<span class="thick">welcome to Lyme Regis Bookshop</span>` opens with a lowercase letter. The same lowercase pattern appears in the "where We Are" footer heading, which is then duplicated four lines later as "Where We Are". Both headings render side by side on mobile because the visibility classes overlap. Google indexes the lowercase one; a first-time visitor reads it as an unfinished CMS field.
Why it matters: The H1 is the single most-read line of text on the homepage. The shop trades on heritage (40 years on Broad Street, the French Lieutenant's Woman shopfront, the Mary Anning statue two minutes south) and on care for detail. A lowercase greeting reads as the opposite. The duplicate footer heading compounds it: on a mobile viewport the page renders two H3s with the same words, one of them lowercase, stacked.
Cause: The Web Smart Media CMS-editable region has been edited at some point with the case-lock off. The footer template ships with two responsive variants and never had the lowercase one cleaned up. Neither is a code bug; both are content-edit slips that no automated check ever caught.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a single content-driven heading source-of-truth in `prospect.business`, rendered with consistent casing across every page. The footer collapses to one address block in one heading. The page renders in Title Case everywhere a heading appears.

02

The shopfront was in the 1981 French Lieutenant's Woman. The homepage almost hides it.

What I saw: The shop's own homepage body mentions, in a single sentence on the third paragraph, that "The shop frontage featured in the 1981 Oscar-nominated film French Lieutenant's Woman, based on John Fowles' book. Of course, we have the book on sale in the shop." The Mary Anning statue, unveiled May 2022 by Alice Roberts a two-minute walk south on the seafront, is not mentioned at all. The Local Books page has the Mary Anning, Fossils and Dinosaurs category commented out of the HTML.
Why it matters: Lyme Regis is the centre of the Jurassic Coast UNESCO site, the birthplace of Mary Anning, and the cinematic Cobb of Persuasion and The French Lieutenant's Woman. The town's book buyers, summer visitors, and fossil-trail walkers all converge on Broad Street. An independent bookshop that does not surface the three things people travel for is a bookshop competing on titles alone with Amazon and Waterstones, which is a fight no indie wins.
Cause: The current CMS has no editorial layer for the homepage. The brand-story slot in the Web Smart Media template is a single body-text box, currently carrying 90 words of mixed introduction and ownership announcement. There is no heritage strip, no specialism block, no above-the-fold mention of the Anning statue or the Cobb.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a heritage strip carrying "Forty years on Broad Street, the shopfront in The French Lieutenant's Woman, two minutes from the Mary Anning statue." A dedicated Jurassic Coast section with the walking and fossil-hunting collections actually merchandised. A literary-Lyme block citing Austen and Fowles by name, with the shop's own stock alongside.

03

The contact strip carries a Scottish phone number under a non-working protocol.

What I saw: In the header info row of every page, the visible "Call Us On" link is wired to `href="callto:01397705931"`. The number 01397 705931 is a Fort William, Scotland prefix. The protocol is `callto:`, which no modern browser supports (the working protocol is `tel:`). The correct Lyme number (01297 442594) is wired correctly elsewhere on the same page, so the wrong link sits literally inches from the right one.
Why it matters: The shop has eight callable links across the site. One of them, in the most prominent header strip, dials a Fort William number, on a protocol nothing dials anyway. The site's footer phone link works. The header phone link is dead. A first-time mobile visitor tapping the header on iPhone Safari gets an "Unable to handle the link" dialog.
Cause: A copy-paste leftover from the Web Smart Media template, probably from a previous client in Lochaber. The CMS's rich-text editor exposes the href but does not validate the protocol; no developer audit has surfaced it because the link looks correct in the rendered page until you tap it.
After rebuild: After rebuild: every callable element is a single `<a href="tel:+441297442594">` rendered from one E.164 number stored in the data object. No `callto:`. No Scotland number. Both header and footer call buttons resolve to the same one source.

Pricing · fixed

One fixed fee. No hourly billing. No upgrade tier.

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits. Fully remote from Switzerland.

• One round of revisions before launch
• DNS cutover handled (the domain stays in your name)
• 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
• Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)

Build · one-off

Fixed for the rebuild

Astro static site, heritage strip, Jurassic Coast specialism, restored Local Books categories, BookStore + LocalBusiness + FAQPage schema, full DNS cutover. Three weeks.

£2,000

fixed · one-off

Care · monthly

Hosting and ongoing care

Vercel hosting, SSL, monthly content tweaks (opening hours, events, the seasonal stock callouts), schema upkeep, monthly analytics email.

£150

/ month · cancel any time

Optional

Embedded chatbot

A small in-page chatbot trained on the shop's FAQ (hours, special orders, the Jurassic Coast collection, bookshop.org home delivery) so visitors get answers out of hours.

£50

/ month · optional

Timeline · three weeks

From accepted proposal to live site, in three weeks.

Week 1

✿ Heritage strip + Jurassic Coast + French Lieutenant's Woman / Mary Anning context on the homepage
✿ Single-source opening hours, address, phone in one editable JSON
✿ BookStore + LocalBusiness + FAQPage schema rendered at build time

Week 2

✿ Local Books page rebuilt with the four commented-out categories restored: Walks & Maps, Mary Anning Fossils & Dinosaurs, Local History, Local Fiction
✿ Events page rebuilt: archive of past signings, signup for the next
✿ Sister-shop cross-link to Bookhaus Bristol and Grove Bookshop Ilkley

Week 3

✿ DNS cutover, Web Smart Media build retired, GTM removed, Plausible added
✿ Mobile audit, Lighthouse passes, schema verified in Search Console
✿ Phase-2 event listings scoped if the shop has them in the diary

FAQ

Five questions an independent bookshop actually asks.

If any answer needs a follow-up call, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

You're rebuilding only the marketing pages, right? Not our bookshop.org order flow? +

Yes. The rebuild is the website at lymebookshop.com: the homepage, Local Books, Events, Our Other Shops, Contact, and a new About page. The bookshop.org storefront (uk.bookshop.org/shop/lymeregisbooks) is a separate platform you don't own the code for, and it stays exactly where it is. We add a clean "Buy online" button on the rebuild that routes to your bookshop.org page. No catalogue migration, no order data move, no risk to running sales.

How do we handle the "Established" wording when the shop predates Kevin and Jayne? +

The current homepage uses "A bookshop for over 40 years, the present owners Kevin and Jayne Ramage took over in December 2020." The rebuild keeps that posture exactly. The hero reads "Forty years on Broad Street." The heritage strip names Kevin and Jayne as the current keepers, dated December 2020, and leaves the founders unnamed (because they are unnamed by the shop's own copy). If you give me the founding year and the founders' names by email I will write them in; if not, the heritage block rests on the verifiable forty-year claim and the literary citations.

The Mary Anning angle is obvious, but is it tasteful? You're an out-of-towner saying it. +

It is tasteful only if it's sparing. The rebuild treats Anning the way the Lyme Regis Museum does: she is a citation, not a marketing hook. One block on the homepage names her, the statue, the year 2022, the unveiling. The Local Books page restores the "Mary Anning, Fossils & Dinosaurs" category that's currently commented out of your own HTML. No Anning silhouette in the logo, no ammonite icon overused (although the existing logo is itself an ammonite, which I keep). It is a citation of fact, not a co-opting of her story.

The shop is open seven days a week and short-staffed in winter. How much CMS editing does this need? +

The rebuild renders from a small JSON file: hours, address, phone, current events, current book-club pick. Updating the homepage hours when winter starts is editing one file, two seconds. The Events page lists from a folder of markdown files, one per event. The bookseller adds a file, the page rebuilds. No CMS login, no plugin updates. If you want a one-page admin form, that's an extra week and £200; most shops with one or two updates a month prefer the JSON.

You're in Switzerland. How does that work for a Dorset bookshop? +

Fully remote, fully asynchronous. I've worked this way for nine years as a British developer. Everything is by email and the occasional video call at a time that suits the shop's short trading day. I do not need to be in Lyme for any of the build. If you want fresh launch photography I can recommend a Dorset photographer; not a condition. Phone +44 7884 442 651 for anything urgent, including DNS cutover day.

Next step · one email, one decision

If the proposal lands, two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

I take on three South West builds this quarter. First confirmed wins the slot. If I don't hear back by 28 May, the proposal site comes down.

Open live preview ↗ Reply to the proposal

Prepared by

Corey Musa

British software developer of nine years, based in Switzerland. I rebuild small-business websites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table.

Email: coreymusa1@gmail.com
Phone: +447884442651

See the live rebuild

A working preview you can click through · opens in this tab

/preview/ ↗