Autoeight builds custom websites for York independents, from the shops and cafes around the Shambles to the firms out at Clifton Moor and Monks Cross. CRM sync, automated emails, AI on the inbox and proper local SEO from day one. We're a Yorkshire studio about an hour away in Halifax, remote by default and over in York when it helps.
York's economy has a shape you don't see anywhere else in the north. Millions of visitors come through the city, and a big slice of its small businesses live off that footfall. Cafes and tearooms around the Shambles and Fossgate. Guesthouses and B&Bs on the roads into town. Restaurants and bars that fill up hard on race days at York Racecourse and go quiet in between. Then there's a second, less visible economy outside the walls: trades and home services covering Acomb, Huntington and Haxby, and office-based firms out on the business parks at Clifton Moor and Monks Cross.
Both halves share the same weak spot. A visitor deciding where to eat tonight searches on their phone, lands on a slow template site with no live menu and no booking link, and moves on to the next result. A homeowner in Acomb looking for an electrician picks whoever looks most organised online. Meanwhile the owner runs enquiries out of a shared inbox, chases deposits by hand, and guesses at which channel actually brought the booking in.
A properly built site fixes both problems at once. It ranks for the searches that matter, and it carries the admin behind them. Bookings and deposits taken inline, enquiries routed and answered quickly, customer details landing in a CRM, review requests going out on their own. That's the work we do for York businesses.
Templates get you online in a weekend, and in York that's exactly the problem, because everyone else did the same thing. When a dozen tearooms near the Minster sit on near-identical Squarespace themes, nobody stands out and nobody ranks well. The page structure is generic, load speed is whatever the platform decides, and every useful integration hides behind another monthly app fee.
You also never own what you've built. The subscription keeps running whether it's race week or a wet Tuesday in January, and when you outgrow the platform your content doesn't come with you cleanly. For a York business that trades hard in season and plans past next year, renting the shopfront forever is the wrong deal.
No theme, no page builder. We design around your offer and the way York customers actually find you, whether that's a visitor searching from a hotel room or a homeowner in Haxby comparing three quotes.
AI drafts replies to enquiries, scores incoming leads and summarises long email threads so you answer the right person first. Hours back every week without adding another tool to learn.
A custom admin showing enquiries, bookings, orders and revenue together. We built the same kind of setup for The Dice Tavern: orders, stock, automated emails and reporting in one place.
Forms, payments and chat feed straight into HubSpot, Pipedrive or a lightweight CRM we build into the site itself. Contacts arrive tagged and follow-up sequences fire on their own.
Booking confirmations, deposit receipts, pre-arrival details, review requests after the visit, win-back nudges for lapsed customers. Each one sends itself without anyone having to remember.
Schema markup, location pages, fast Core Web Vitals and content written for the searches York customers run. The same SEO scaffolding we set up for TM Joinery across six regions.
Custom builds start from £2,000 for a focused setup, and most projects land between 3 and 12 weeks from kickoff to launch. You get a fixed quote for the whole project. No per-seat licences, no monthly platform fees, no hourly billing surprises. Book the free call and you'll come away with a rough budget for yours.
We'll be straight about geography. Autoeight is based in Halifax, about an hour from York by road. Day to day we work remotely, with video calls, a shared project board and quick turnaround on messages, and we come to you for kickoff, workshops and launch when being in the room helps. Plenty of clients never need us on site at all. Whether you're inside the walls, out at Clifton Moor or Monks Cross, or in the villages around the city, distance won't be what slows the project down.
Yes. We're a Halifax studio, about an hour from York by road. Day to day we work remotely, with video calls and a shared project board, and we drive over for kickoff and key meetings when being in the room helps. We won't pretend to be a York agency. We're a Yorkshire one that covers the city properly.
Booking and deposit systems, menus and room pages your staff can update themselves, automated confirmation and pre-arrival emails, review requests after checkout, gift vouchers, and a dashboard showing bookings and enquiries in one screen. For trades and office firms the same thinking applies: quote forms routed by job type, CRM sync, and follow-ups that send themselves.
Because you'd be renting, not owning. With a custom build the code is yours, integrations run server-side instead of through a paid app store, pages load fast, and the SEO is set up for York searches specifically. When the business grows, the site grows with it rather than hitting a platform ceiling.
Book a call. We'll go through your current site, point out what's costing you bookings or enquiries, and give you a straight quote.
Book a free call