Howard Wing. Built to turn visitors into bookings.

The job

One job. A whole website experience built around it.

What he asked for

Everything on his list. Then some.

• Film first

  His welcome film sits above every enquiry form on the site, so a couple hears why people book him before they type a word.

• One route in

  His form, his questions, in his order. No price, no diary lookup, no scheduler. He replies himself and arranges the meeting, because that is how every booking of his starts.

• Real couples, named

  The thank-you cards on the site are from real weddings, with the couple's names and their own words. Nothing is stock and nothing is invented.

• His look, from his own board

  A near-black stage, warm champagne, three typefaces he chose. The party lives in the photography and the copy, not in loud colour.

• A page for where you are marrying

  Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Yorkshire, the North East, Cumbria and Staffordshire each have their own page, with the venues he has actually sung in and the couples who booked him there.

• The Wall of Fame

  Thirty-seven photos and films of rooms he has had on their feet. Been to one of his weddings? You might be on it.

• Destination weddings as a showcase

  Tuscany, Ibiza, Cyprus. Built as proof of standing, not as a shop window, because he does not want more of that work. His call, kept.

• Tested on his own phone

  He watched it on an older iPhone and told me what jumped. I fixed the scroll and the films the same morning, then fixed the one video his old iMac refused, too.

The INKON know-how

The INKON work you don't see, and what it does for you.

This is what makes a site feel expensive without looking like it is trying. None of it is on his list, all of it is on the site.

• Films that play where you look

  There are nine films on the site. Each one plays as it comes into view and rests when it leaves, so a page full of video still feels light on a phone.

• Photos that never queue

  Video is served in slices rather than whole files, so the photos never wait behind a film to load. On a slow connection you notice the difference; on a fast one you never think about it.

• A scroll that tells a story

  Each section rises in as you reach it and the page slides over the hero film. Turn motion off in your settings and you get the still version, complete.

• Thank-you cards you can flip

  The polaroids on the homepage turn over to show the note the couple wrote. Small, and people play with it.

• Twenty years of links, kept

  His domain has two decades of history. Every old address, including ones Google still remembered from years ago, lands on the right new page in one step.

• Search engines let in on the day

  The site was hidden from search until the morning it went live, then opened with its sitemap ready and Search Console listening. No half-built pages ever got indexed.

On launch day Google's own Lighthouse test scored the homepage 97 for performance and 100 for accessibility, best practice and SEO. That is the engineering doing its job quietly.

By the numbers

The site, in numbers.

• 18 pages
• 7 regions, each with its own page
• 37 photos and films on the Wall of Fame
• 9 films across the site

And it keeps growing. Howard is on INKON's Grow plan, so every wedding he sings at can become a new film, a new thank-you card or a new page on the site, added as it happens rather than once a year. The numbers above are launch day, not the finished article.

In his words

What Howard thinks of his new website.

“John gets as excited as you do. Anybody I work with, if they're excited, I'm excited. You know it's going to be a great outcome.”

I do get excited. It is the best part of the job. And yes, the AI listens to our meeting so nothing you say gets lost; the voice and the judgement are mine. John

Read the full transcript

Hi guys, how are you doing? This is just a quick message for John over at INKON. He has just completed a website for me, and I've got to say, oh my god, how good is my site? You can probably tell by the way that I'm sounding.

For probably quite a few years now I've felt a little bit invisible online. I've still been at work and doing my thing, but I've always felt a little bit invisible and not really seen, and something had to change. So I got in touch with John, and I'm going to say the whole process from start to finish has probably been about three weeks, three or four weeks. And I can't fault him. I love his system, I love the way that he works. Everything was really seamless.

Any ideas that I have - obviously we have that initial chat with him, and I know his AI listens in and picks up on everything that I'm saying, and then they take that and build the site around it. But what I found really good was the fact that my site is in my voice. It doesn't feel like it's an AI website. It feels like it's me. And I think that was really, really important, to come across as authentic as I can.

And then any changes, anything that I wanted different, literally done within minutes. I couldn't believe it. I had a list of things which I sent him on WhatsApp, and it just said "look on site now". Two minutes later. Don't know how he does it. I'm sure he's got a team of robots or a team of AIs helping, but wow. The service was great. John's great to deal with, really friendly, and he gets excited as you do, or certainly as I was. And I like to see that. Anybody that I work with, or buy things from, if they're excited, I'm excited. You know it's going to be a great outcome. And I've loved it. The whole process has been great.

So big shout out to John at INKON. If you're thinking of using them for your website, look no further. I have known John for many years and his skill level is... I call him my own personal genius. He knows his shit. Anything to do with online, computer design, branding, he's on the money. So yes, you won't go wrong with INKON, guys. That's my recommendation. Thoroughly recommended from me, Howard Wing.

The back-story

Why Howard came back to INKON.