The short version
- Before: an Instagram account, a Facebook page, and a coach answering the same questions by message every evening — when are the classes, how much is it, can beginners come.
- After: unionthai.co.uk — 26 pages, four video loops, a free-first-class popup, a contact form, click-to-call, a timetable, three membership tiers with Stripe checkout wired in, and sixteen short articles aimed at the searches people in the town actually make.
- Two days from the content arriving to the domain pointing at the new site. £300, the price on the offer page.
- The gym owns its domain. The site is hosted on Cloudflare. No results are claimed yet — it launched in October 2026 and this page will be updated when there are numbers worth showing.
The other case studies on this site are operations platforms built over weeks, with hours-saved figures and the arithmetic behind them. This one is smaller and faster, and it is here for a different reason: the £300 website is the first thing most businesses buy from me, and a price like that invites one fair question. What do you actually get? This is the answer, on a real business, with the live site one click away.
What did the gym have before?
Union Thai trains people of every level in Muay Thai, MMA and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, six days a week, in Gorleston-on-Sea. The head coach has over forty years in Muay Thai; the team includes a K1 champion with sixteen titles. It is a serious gym, and until October 2026 its entire presence on the internet was two social accounts.
That works until somebody who does not already follow you tries to find you. A parent searching for kids' martial arts in Great Yarmouth, a lad who has just moved to the coast and wants an MMA gym, a woman who wants to know whether beginners are welcome before she walks in — none of them land on an Instagram grid, and if they do, the grid does not tell them the price, the timetable or where to park. So the coach answered the same four questions by direct message, every evening, and the people who did not message were simply lost.
What was built, exactly?
| Part of the site | What it does |
|---|---|
| Home | Headline, discipline line, two buttons. Then the three disciplines, the weekly timetable, the three memberships, the head coach, a gallery and a closing call to action. Video loops sit in the gallery and behind the closer. |
| Classes · three pages | Muay Thai, MMA and BJJ each get a page: what the class is, who it suits, what to bring, when it runs. These are the pages a search engine sends people to. |
| Timetable | Monday to Sunday, every session, with the one-to-one slots marked. The single most-asked question, answered without a message. |
| Memberships | Monthly, session packs, pay as you go. Each has a Join / Pay button with Stripe checkout behind it, and a questions section underneath: contracts, freezing, trials, kids. |
| Coaches | Four coaches with records and photographs, and a one-to-one coaching section with its own enquiry route. |
| About · Contact | The gym's story and values; then a contact form, the phone number as a tap-to-call, Facebook and Instagram message links, and a Google Maps link to the door. |
| Journal · 16 articles | Short, factual pieces on the searches local people make: Muay Thai in Great Yarmouth, martial arts in Gorleston, kids' classes, women's classes, a beginner's guide, MMA versus Muay Thai, and so on. |
| Lead capture | A “first class free” popup asking for a name and an email, and the contact form. Both go straight to email in seconds. |
| Brand and motion | The gym's own black, yellow and red, a heavy display face, brush-stroke marks, an intro animation, scroll reveals, a ticker and four self-hosted video loops. Nothing from a stock library. |
| Under the bonnet | Static files on Cloudflare with SSL, obfuscated email addresses, titles and descriptions on every page, a sitemap, and a “site by byHoratio” line in the footer. |
| Price | £300, one-off. Two days from content to live. |
One honest note about the memberships page. The tiers, the questions and the Stripe checkout are built and waiting; the gym is still settling its prices, so the page says so and the pay buttons go live when the owner confirms the numbers. I would rather you click through and see that than read a claim here that the live site does not yet match.
How was it built in two days?
Not by working through the night. Three things made it quick, and all three are available to any business that wants them.
- The content arrived in one go. Logo, photos, four short video clips shot on a phone, the timetable, the coach details and the memberships structure, all on day one. The seven days quoted on the offer page is mostly waiting for exactly this.
- The template already existed. The layout system, the animation, the forms, the hosting setup and the page structure were built and tested before this job started. The two days went into the gym's words, photographs, pages and details, not into a navigation bar.
- One person decided. The owner looked at a live preview on day one, sent one list of changes, and the site went live on day two. No committee, no third round, no brand workshop.
Day one was structure, copy and the first preview: every page built, the timetable and memberships laid out, the articles drafted from what the gym had already said about itself on social media and in conversation. Day two was the change list, the video, the popup, the domain and the launch checks on a phone. The gym did not write a word; the owner read, corrected and approved.
Why sixteen articles on a £300 site?
Because of how the gym's customers search. Nobody types “Union Thai” into Google unless they already know the gym. They type a town and a thing: Muay Thai Great Yarmouth, kids' martial arts Gorleston, MMA gym Lowestoft, women's self-defence classes near me. A five-page site has one page that might answer one of those. Sixteen short, factual articles give each of those searches a page of its own, written in plain English about this gym, with the timetable and the free first class one click away.
This is the “basic on-page SEO” line on the offer page done with some intent rather than as a checkbox. It is still not a campaign. Rankings for local terms take months to settle, they depend on the gym's Google Business Profile and reviews as much as on the site, and I am not going to claim a position for a page that went live this month. When there are numbers, they will be on this page with the date next to them.
What did it cost, and what was outside the standard scope?
£300, the price on the offer page. The standard scope for that price is up to five pages, one round of revisions and the basics done properly. This build went to 26 pages, with video, a popup and payment checkout, and it is worth being clear about why that did not change the price. The gym turned up with every piece of content ready, the journal articles cost very little once the template and the facts exist, and the video, the popup and the Stripe wiring are all things the template already knows how to do when the material is there.
Treat the five pages as the promise and this as what happens when the content is ready on day one. If your photographs need taking, your logo needs drawing or your offer needs working out, that is a different and longer conversation, and I will say so before you pay anything. The £30 a month care plan, hosting, SSL, backups and small changes, applies here as everywhere; so does the rule that the business owns its domain and gets the files if it ever leaves.
Does this translate to a trade business?
A gym is not one of the five trades the offer is written for, and that is part of why it is useful as an example. Strip the brush strokes away and the job is identical to a landscaper's or a fencer's site. Show the work. Answer the four questions people message you about so they stop messaging and start enquiring. Give every town-and-service search a page. Put a form and a phone number on every screen. Make it fast on the device people actually use. The disciplines become services, the timetable becomes an areas-covered list, the free first class becomes a free quote.
And the same thing is true afterwards. A new site produces more enquiries, and enquiries that go unanswered for a day are the most expensive leak in a small business — the quote response time calculator shows how expensive. Which is why the forms on this site were built ready for the first fix, an instant reply and a two-day chase, and why the question I ask every owner after handover is about their working week, not their colour scheme. The method behind that question is in the guide; where it leads, for the businesses that want it to, is the operations audit and the four larger builds written up alongside this one.
Questions people ask about the £300 website
How long did the website take to build?
Two days from the content arriving to the domain pointing at the new site. The gym sent the logo, photos, four short video clips, the timetable and the coach details in one go, which is what made two days possible. The seven days quoted on the offer page is the promise; this is what happens when the content is ready on day one.
Did the gym have to write anything?
No. The copy came from a conversation and from what the gym had already said on Instagram and Facebook. The owner read it and corrected it; he did not write it. That is the arrangement for every build at this price: you supply the facts and the photos, the words are my job.
What happens when someone fills in the free-class popup or the contact form?
Both go straight to email within seconds, with the person's name, email and message ready to reply to. There is no CRM, no login and nothing to learn. The obvious next step, once the enquiries are flowing, is an instant auto-reply and a two-day chase, which is the first of the fixed-price fixes.
Is a £300 website a real website or a template?
Both, which is the point. The layout, the animation system, the forms and the hosting are a template I have already built and tested, so the hours go into the content and the detail rather than into reinventing a navigation bar. Every word, photo, colour and page on this site is the gym's. Nobody has mistaken it for a template.
Why are there no prices on the memberships page?
Because the gym is settling them. The three tiers, the FAQ and the Stripe checkout are built and waiting; the moment the owner confirms the numbers, the prices and the pay buttons go live. I would rather show a page that says prices to be confirmed than one that shows the wrong price.
Can my site have video, a popup and online payments too?
Yes, if you have the material. Video needs short clips shot on a phone in decent light; the popup needs a genuine offer, like a free first session; payments need a Stripe account in your name and a decision about what you charge. None of them changed the price here, because they were ready on day one. If they need producing from scratch, that is a conversation first.