Introducing Ordinary Websites: Web Design Inspiration for Local Businesses
Hello from Paul. Why I built Ordinary Websites, what you will find in the gallery, how sites are chosen, and what is coming next.
6 min read
Hello, I’m Paul. I’m a freelance web designer and developer, and since 2016 I have built websites mostly for local and service businesses: the clinic on the high street, the restaurant round the corner, the tradesperson whose phone needs to ring. Not SaaS start-ups, not agency portfolios. Real companies with real customers.
Ordinary Websites exists because, in all that time, finding good examples of sites like theirs has been a manual job. The big galleries are built around animation, effects, portfolios and tech. So for every new project I did the research myself, from scratch, and saved what I found into a browser bookmarks folder that only ever got messier.
The problem: galleries ignore the sites most of us build
Awwwards, Godly and Land-book are full of SaaS launches, agency showreels and personal portfolios. A lot of it is beautiful. Very little of it helps when the brief on your desk is for a roofer, a dental practice or a day spa.
The obvious next step is to search for it. Type “dentist website examples” and you get lists padded with templates, big chains and dead links, usually written by someone selling a theme or a booking tool. The examples are there to sell the product, not to show you what good looks like.
So the workaround becomes a habit. Every new client starts with hours of digging: clicking through local businesses in other cities, hoping one of them has a site worth learning from, and bookmarking anything that does. The good ones end up buried among the rest, and the next project starts the search all over again.
And the bookmarks were the tidy part. You should see my Figma files: page after page of screenshots pasted in over the years, overlapping, unlabelled, half of them from sites that have since been redesigned. Every so often I promise myself I will sort them out. I never do.
Why local business sites deserve their own gallery
A local business website does a different job from a product launch page. It has to get the phone ringing, fill the booking calendar and earn a stranger’s trust in the few seconds they spend deciding whether to call. That is a design problem with its own rules.
Where does the booking button go on a spa site? How does a dental practice show its prices without looking like a discount chain? How much does a restaurant need beyond the menu, the hours and a way to reserve? A SaaS landing page, however well made, teaches you very little about any of that.
The sites that answer those questions well do exist. There are plenty of them. They are just scattered across thousands of small businesses, and nobody has been collecting them.
What Ordinary Websites is
Ordinary Websites is that collection: a curated gallery of real, working local business websites.
- Browse by category. Clinics, dentists, spas, restaurants and more, each with its own page, so you can go straight to the niche your client is in.
- Every site is captured and dated. Each one is shown as a full-page screenshot of its homepage, with the date it was captured and what it is made with. Sites change; the date tells you when it looked like this.
- Platform neutral. WordPress, Webflow, Squarespace, Shopify, Framer, custom code: the best site is chosen whatever it is built with.
- Free to browse. No account, no sign-up wall.
How sites are chosen
Every site in the gallery meets the same four tests:
- It is live, and belongs to a real, currently operating business.
- It is an independent or local business, not a national chain or an enterprise brand.
- It is judged on how well the design does its job: clear services, an obvious call or booking action, trust signals, strong interface design and a good mobile experience.
- It is not chosen for its platform. “Made with” is shown on every site, but it never decides whether a site gets in.
That last point matters more than it sounds. A platform’s own showcase can only show you sites built on that platform. This gallery can show you the best dentist website whatever it runs on.
Why “Ordinary”
The name means two things. Ordinary businesses: the cleaning services, builders, dentists, gyms, lawyers, accountants and pest control firms that make up most of the high street, and most designers’ client lists. And ordinary websites, in the best sense: real sites doing real work, not the showreel web.
A taste of the gallery
A few favourites from the gallery so far.
Chelsea Dental Clinic
Dentist
Made with WordPressCaptured
Chelsea Dental Clinic, London. A location section near the end does the practical work well: a map, the full address, parking, the nearest tube stations, step-free access and the full opening hours, all next to a “Book a Consultation” button.
Ola Aesthetics
Clinic
Made with WebflowCaptured
Ola Aesthetics, Perth. Four buttons in the hero split the clinic’s services straight away (aesthetics, hair, men, women), and photos of the team come before any treatment list.
Tanuki
Restaurant
Made with SquarespaceCaptured
Tanuki, Sydney. Two colours and a line-drawn raccoon give an izakaya plenty of personality, while “Reserve a table” and “View our menus” sit right under the first photo.
August Collections
Real Estate
Made with WebflowCaptured
August Collections, Europe. A holiday home business with two clear header actions, “Book a call” and “Request a brochure”, and a collections carousel where the card in focus shows bedrooms, floor area and cities at a glance.
You can browse more in the dentist, clinic, restaurant and real estate categories.
What’s next
New sites go into the gallery every week, and new categories open as they fill up. Trades such as plumbers, roofers and electricians are among the categories still being filled.
Alongside the gallery, the blog will publish in-depth guides for each niche: the strongest examples in a category, what each one does well, and the patterns that repeat across them.
And every Friday, the newsletter sends five of the best new sites straight to your inbox. Five websites. Every Friday.
Thanks for reading
I built this because I wanted it on my own desk every time a new brief came in. If you design for everyday businesses too, I hope it saves you some of those hours of digging.
Frequently asked questions
Is Ordinary Websites free?
Yes. The whole gallery is free to browse, and you do not need an account.
How are sites chosen?
Every site is live, belongs to a real, currently operating business, and is an independent or local business rather than a national chain. Sites are picked on how well the design does its job, whatever platform they are built with.
Where are the featured businesses based?
All over the globe. We feature the best local business websites wherever the business happens to be.
How often are new sites added?
Every week. The newsletter sends five of the best new finds by email every Friday.