Speciality sector
Web design for UK mills
We build websites for British manufacturing mills — woollen, worsted and textile mills, plus flour, paper and timber mills. Fabric libraries, swatch requests, trade and retail ordering and the heritage story that sells a British-made product at home and for export.
Mill websites have problems ordinary sites don't
A mill is not a normal e-commerce business. You sell by the metre and the piece, to trade and to public, from a range that changes every season — and the product has to look exactly right on screen. These are the four things we solve first.
Huge, complex product ranges
Hundreds of cloths across qualities, weights, compositions and colourways. We build filterable fabric libraries so buyers land on the right cloth in a couple of clicks.
Trade and retail in one place
Wholesale customers need account pricing, minimum order quantities and metreage; retail customers want a simple basket. We separate the two without running two websites.
Cloth that has to look right on screen
Colour-accurate photography, macro weave shots and zoomable swatches, so what a buyer sees is what arrives on the roll.
Export and heritage buyers
Mills sell far beyond their valley. Fast UK-hosted pages, clear shipping information and a heritage story that travels internationally.
What we build for mills
Every mill site we build starts from the same specialist toolkit, then gets tailored to your cloth, your customers and the way your office already works.
Fabric library with filters
Search by composition, weight (gsm/oz), weave, width, colour and end use.
Swatch & sample requests
Buyers add swatches to a request basket and you receive a single, tidy fulfilment order.
Trade & retail shop
Our e-commerce framework with account-level pricing, MOQs, metre-based quantities and cut-length options.
Stock & lead-time clarity
Show in-stock pieces, made-to-order lines and realistic lead times so sales spend less time on email.
Mill & fabric SEO
Rank for the cloths you weave — tweed, worsted, lambswool, upholstery, uniform and contract fabric terms.
Heritage storytelling
Mill history, provenance, machinery and people — the reasons buyers choose a British mill over an import.
Built on real mill experience
We designed and built the website for Marton Mills, the Yorkshire weaving mill, and that project shaped how we approach the sector: a large woven range presented clearly, swatches and samples made easy to request, and trade and retail customers looked after side by side. We now offer that same service to mills across the UK — Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Scottish Borders, Wales, the West Country and beyond.
01
Mill visit or call
We learn your ranges, customer types, ordering rules and what your sales team repeats every day.
02
Structure & data
We map your cloth data into a clean product structure that your team can maintain without a developer.
03
Design & photography
A design built around the cloth, with guidance on shooting fabric so colours hold up on screen.
04
Build, launch & grow
high-performance platform framework build, UK hosting, training for your team, then ongoing SEO and improvements.
Funding for manufacturing websites
Manufacturing is one of the sectors covered by the website grant schemes we work with, which can fund a share of a brand-new build. We check eligibility for your mill before you commit to anything.
- Eligibility checked for you — no cost, no obligation
- Grant offset against your build invoice
- We handle the paperwork alongside the project
Mills we work with
If you weave, spin, grind or mill it in Britain, the same principles apply.
- Woollen & worsted mills
- Tweed & tartan weavers
- Upholstery & contract fabric mills
- Yarn spinners & dyers
- Flour & grain mills
- Timber & saw mills
- Paper mills
- Heritage & working museum mills
Related: web design and SEO services.
Case study
Marton Mills — a Yorkshire weaving mill, online properly
Marton Mills has woven cloth in Otley since 1931 and sells to highlandwear makers, uniform suppliers, interior specifiers and the public — in the UK and for export. We designed and built martonmills.com around that reality: one structured fabric library serving trade, retail and contract buyers at the same time. Here is the process, and what it produced.
- Client
- Marton Mills, Otley
- Sector
- Textile weaving mill
- Weaving since
- 1931
- Scope
- Design, build, SEO, support
The process, step by step
Five phases took the mill from an ageing brochure site to a structured fabric platform selling to trade and retail at once.
PHASE 01
Discovery at the mill
We spent time on site with the sales and design teams, mapping how orders actually arrive: sample requests by phone, trade accounts on account pricing, retail metre orders, and specifiers asking for composition and weight data.
- Audit of the old site and search visibility
- Trade vs retail vs contract journeys mapped
- Every repeated sales-team question logged
PHASE 02
Fabric data structure
The whole range was modelled as structured product data — quality, code, composition, weave, gsm and glm, colourway and related shades — so one clean source powers filters, specification tables, search and the shop.
- Quality → colourway hierarchy
- Related-fabric linking across shades
- Maintainable in-house without a developer
PHASE 03
Swatch photography & colour accuracy
Cloth sells on colour. We set the photography standard — consistent lighting, macro weave detail and hover-zoom — so what a buyer sees on screen matches what arrives on the roll.
- Consistent lighting and colour profile
- Macro weave shots plus flat swatches
- Zoom and enlarge on every fabric
PHASE 04
Trade & retail commerce
Retail pricing shows publicly per metre inc. and exc. VAT, while registered trade customers get wholesale pricing behind a login — protecting margins and existing agent relationships in one website.
- Trade registration and account pricing
- Metre-based quantities and cut lengths
- Free sample ordering as a lead engine
PHASE 05
SEO, launch & ongoing growth
Fabric, tartan and highlandwear search terms were targeted at page level, the site was launched on fast UK hosting with the team trained to run it, and we've kept improving it since.
- Per-collection and per-fabric SEO
- Fast UK hosting and clean technical SEO
- Ongoing content and conversion work
THE RESULT
One website that sells cloth to trade, retail and contract buyers worldwide.
Visit martonmills.com
Hundreds
of cloths presented in one filterable library
3 free
samples ordered online instead of by phone
Trade + retail
served side by side on a single site
Global
buyers and specifiers reached from Otley
The finished website, page by page
Click any screenshot to view it full size.
Homepage
Heritage-led hero, clear routes into Collections, Design and Sustainability, and a free-sample offer bar that turns browsers into named leads.
Fabric catalogue
Hundreds of cloths in one filterable library — filter by collection, colour, composition and weight, with colour-true swatch imagery on every card.
Fabric detail page
Zoomable weave photography, full specification (quality, code, composition, weave, gsm), metre-based quantities, shipping weight and a wholesale trade-pricing route beside retail pricing.
Bespoke design service
A dedicated page for custom cloth development, so high-value bespoke enquiries get their own conversion path instead of hiding inside a contact form.
Heritage story
The mill's story since 1931 — provenance, machinery and people. This is the content overseas buyers read before they trust a British mill with an order.
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions we get asked most before starting a project.
How much does a website for a UK mill cost?
Most mill websites we build sit between a focused brochure site with a fabric library and a larger build with swatch requests, trade login and product data. We quote a fixed price after a discovery call, and we check grant eligibility first so funding can offset part of the build.
Can you show our full fabric and cloth range online?
Yes. We build filterable fabric libraries with composition, weight, width, colourway and end-use filters, plus high-resolution swatch photography, so buyers and specifiers can shortlist cloth without emailing your sales team.
Can trade customers see different pricing to the public?
We can gate trade pricing behind a login, show retail pricing publicly, or hide pricing entirely and route enquiries to a quote form — whichever protects your margins and your existing agent relationships.
Will the site help us export and reach overseas buyers?
We structure content for international search, cover shipping and minimum-order information clearly, and make specification data easy to translate or download, which is what overseas buyers and specifiers look for first.
Do you have experience with textile manufacturers?
Yes — we built and maintain Marton Mills' website, which is why we understand swatch workflows, warp and weft terminology, heritage storytelling and the difference between contract, retail and trade audiences.
Can a grant cover part of our mill website?
Manufacturing and small-business digital grant schemes can fund part of a website and SEO build. We check what you are eligible for before you commit and handle the paperwork alongside the project.
Let's put your cloth online properly
Tell us about your mill, your ranges and your customers. We'll come back with a plan, a price and a grant eligibility check.