One developer, in Crowborough, accountable for the whole job

I am Stephen Evans. I have been building websites professionally since 2022, mostly bespoke WordPress for businesses across Sussex and Kent, and in my own time I build products. Kestrel is the studio name for that work.

Crowborough, East Sussex
Building since 2022
Two client builds at a time
hello@madebykestrel.co.uk

How I got here, which was not in a straight line

In 2018 I spent a year volunteering at an IT centre in Uckfield, teaching older people how to use their own laptops and phones. I also built and looked after the centre’s website, which is the part that stuck. Wealden District Council made me Young Volunteer of the Year for it and BBC Sussex nominated me as a Young Achiever, which mattered a lot to an eighteen-year-old.

Then two years selling and setting up technology at John Lewis. Not glamorous, and the most useful training I have had. You learn quickly that nobody cares how clever a thing is if they cannot work out how to use it.

I taught myself to code properly in the evenings, joined a web studio in East Sussex in 2022 and became its main developer. Four years of owning builds end to end for retail, hospitality, healthcare, property and the trades. Front end, PHP, databases, SEO, launch, and the phone call when something broke.

Why I build my own products

Client work teaches you to build. Running your own product teaches you what happens afterwards. Townsmith has paying users and a support inbox. Cartback lives on the Shopify App Store. SoloCRM I ran for two years and then closed properly, migrating everyone off and refunding the annual plans.

That experience changes how I quote. When someone asks me for a booking system, I am thinking about the second winter, not the launch date. It is also why every app quote I send includes a two-year running cost estimate that nobody asked for.

On AI, since you will ask

I use Claude and tools like it every working day, and I have gone deep enough to know where they help and where they quietly cause problems. They are very good at production and iteration. They are unreliable about security, about the specific quirks of your data, and about knowing when a shortcut is a bad idea.

So I read everything before it ships and I am accountable for it. Townsmith is partly an argument with the same technology: it exists to stop people generating hundreds of thin pages because generating them became free. Using these tools well is now one of the more useful things I do, and I am happy to talk through exactly how.

Four things I actually believe

Bespoke, every time

Shaped to the business and the job. A theme is someone else's assumptions about a company that is not yours.

Speed is the first thing anyone feels

Before the design, before the copy. A slow site is a bad first impression you cannot argue your way out of.

Accountability over volume

Two builds at a time, both mine. No juniors learning on your project, no account manager between us.

Say the inconvenient thing early

If your budget does not match your brief, or the job suits someone else better, you hear it in the first reply.

Toolkit and the honest gaps

What I use

React, Next.js, JavaScript, Sass, Tailwind
PHP, Laravel, Node, MySQL
WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify
Claude and Claude Code, reviewed line by line

What I am not

Not a brand designer, not a copywriter, not a native mobile developer, and not a marketing agency. I have people I trust for each and I will introduce you without taking a cut.

Away from the keyboard I am at the gym first thing, and I build small games in Unreal and Unity because I like making things that are not work.

You know who you would be working with now.

Get a quote in four questions

hello@madebykestrel.co.uk · replies inside one working day

This page, measured in your browser

Your device

LCPMeasuring…

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How long until the main content appears. Google wants under 2.5 seconds.

INPMeasuring…

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How quickly the page answers when you tap. Under 200ms is the target.

CLSMeasuring…

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How much the layout moves while loading. Under 0.1, ideally zero.

Real numbers from your device and connection, not a screenshot of a score I chose. Nothing is sent anywhere. The measurement happens in your browser and stays there. If one of these ever reads amber on my own site, you will see it, which is rather the point. I audit these for £650.