✿ Proposal · Ruby Tuesday Alnwick · 19 May 2026

A few specific fixes for rubytuesdayalnwick.com.

I rebuild small independent websites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table. I spent an evening on the Ruby Tuesday site. Three things stood out on mobile, all of them visible in the first viewport. Three findings below, then a working rebuild you can click through.

Open live preview ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal

Address · 16 Narrowgate, Alnwick, Northumberland NE66 1JG Trading since · 2017 Owner · Fiona Nelson-van Loon

16 Narrowgate · Alnwick · since 2017

Fiona's curated boutique on the corner of Alnwick Castle. Knitwear, Jellycat, gifting, lighting. Open the live preview ↗

Three findings, in order of revenue impact

What the current site is leaving on the table.

A walk-through of the live rubytuesdayalnwick.com on 19 May 2026.

01

Ruby Tuesday is one of Alnwick's known Jellycat stockists, yet the homepage hero leads with a generic Shopify carousel.

Observation: The Tripadvisor reviews mention the "Jelly Cat corner" by name. Instagram DMs and walk-in questions about Jellycat are the single most-asked product line according to Fiona's public posts. Yet on rubytuesdayalnwick.com the homepage hero rotates through a Dawn-derived Shopify carousel of seasonal product tiles (Peggy strawberries, Eribe Alpine, Powellcraft) with the word "Jellycat" appearing only in a small collection card below the fold and as a small badge on a mobile-cropped strip.
Revenue impact: A castle visitor walking down Narrowgate Googles "Jellycat Alnwick" or "Jellycat near Alnwick Castle". Ruby Tuesday is the answer to that query on a geographic basis, but the homepage signal that closes the loop (a clear "Jellycat stockist in Alnwick" anchor in the hero) is missing. Visitors instead end up on the official Jellycat retailer locator which sends them to a Newcastle department store, and Ruby Tuesday loses the £20 to £60 transaction and the foot-fall multiplier on the rest of the shop.
After rebuild: After rebuild: the hero carries a "Jellycat stockist on Narrowgate" eyebrow in the first viewport, with a clean shop-the-Jellycat strip above the fold (Amuseables, Bashfuls, Christmas seasonal). The Jellycat page becomes a real category landing with stockist context and the in-store "Jellycat corner" framed as a visit reason, not just an SKU grid.

02

Fiona, the curated buy, the move from 8 to 16 Narrowgate, nowhere on the homepage.

Observation: Fiona Nelson-van Loon opened Ruby Tuesday in 2017 in the original Narrowgate premises and spent seven years building the curated-buying side of the business before moving into the bigger former Seasons of Alnwick unit at 16 Narrowgate. The Northumberland Gazette covered the move. The "We buy what we love" line from the About page is the strongest sentence Ruby Tuesday owns. The current homepage names neither Fiona, nor the move, nor the eight-year build. The owner-led independent story sits two clicks deep on /pages/about-us.
Revenue impact: For an independent boutique in a market town the "who buys for the shop" question is the single most defensible thing it owns against the chain network. A Jellycat shopper choosing between Ruby Tuesday, John Lewis Newcastle and Amazon decides partly on who they are trusting with the gift. Buyer-led independents win that decision when the homepage carries the story; they lose it silently when the homepage looks like every other Shopify Dawn theme.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a "Curated by Fiona on Narrowgate since 2017" panel sits between the hero and the shop grid. The move to 16 Narrowgate is in the visit section as continuity, not promotion. The "We buy what we love" line opens the heritage block. The About copy gets re-cut so the homepage carries the headline and the About page carries the prose.

03

No Store / LocalBusiness JSON-LD, no shopfront `og:image`, no opening-hours markup.

Observation: A crawl of rubytuesdayalnwick.com surfaces the default Shopify Organization + Product schema, but no Store / LocalBusiness block with the 16 Narrowgate address, no openingHoursSpecification, no AggregateRating despite a strong Tripadvisor presence, no FAQPage, no `og:image` pointing at the shopfront photo. The phone number (01665 603717) is a plain string. The opening hours (Mon to Sat 09:00-17:15, Sun 11:00-16:00) are visible in the footer image but invisible to a structured-data crawler.
Revenue impact: "Gift shop Alnwick", "Jellycat Alnwick", "boutique near Alnwick Castle", "open Sunday Alnwick". Every one of these queries is increasingly answered by AI assistants that read structured data first. Ruby Tuesday's 4.7-star reviews, its Narrowgate anchor and its Sunday opening hours are all known facts that the search layer cannot see. When the WhatsApp / iMessage unfurl of the homepage shows a generic Shopify card instead of the navy shopfront with white signage, the share rate drops too.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a Store + LocalBusiness JSON-LD block with the 16 Narrowgate PostalAddress, geo coordinates, telephone in E.164, openingHoursSpecification for all seven days, AggregateRating pulled from Google, and a FAQPage block covering Jellycat, gift wrap, click-and-collect and shipping. Absolute `og:image` pointed at the shopfront. AI summaries for "gift shop Alnwick" begin citing Ruby Tuesday within weeks.

Web stack and gaps inventory, 19 May 2026

Where the gaps sit.

Current ↗ rubytuesdayalnwick.com

Platform: Shopify (Dawn-derived theme, "Powered by Shopify" footer)
Hero: Autoplay carousel of seasonal product tiles, generic Shopify section
Heritage: Two clicks to /pages/about-us; founder named nowhere on the homepage
Schema: Default Shopify Organization + Product only. No Store, no LocalBusiness, no FAQPage
OG image: Shopify-set default, not the navy storefront
Hours markup: Visible in footer as image, invisible to crawlers (no openingHoursSpecification)

Proposed

Framework: Astro static front, Shopify Storefront API for live stock + checkout
Hosting: Vercel edge, sub-100ms first byte across the UK
Hero: Custom "Jellycat stockist on Narrowgate" lead, owner-led story above the shop grid
Heritage: Fiona, the 2017 founding, the move from 8 to 16 Narrowgate, on the homepage
Schema: Store + LocalBusiness + FAQPage + AggregateRating + per-product offers
OG image: Absolute URL to the shopfront photo; tested across WhatsApp / iMessage / Slack
Checkout: Shopify checkout kept as-is. No migration risk to orders, customers, payments

Pricing

Fixed price, no hourly billing.

One number for the rebuild. Optional monthly for hosting and ongoing care. No retainer, no contract, no in-person visits.

Build

Full Astro front end on the existing Shopify back end

Jellycat-stockist hero, owner-led "Curated by Fiona on Narrowgate since 2017" panel, Store + LocalBusiness + FAQPage schema, the shopfront as `og:image`. Three to four week build.

• One round of revisions before launch
• DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain in your name)
• 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
• Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)

£2,000

one-off · fixed

Ongoing

Hosting + ongoing care

Vercel edge hosting, security patches, small copy and image updates, analytics. Cancel any time.

£150

per month

Optional

Embedded chatbot, trained on the FAQs

Answers Jellycat, gift wrap, click-and-collect, shipping. Drops in after launch.

£50

per month, optional

Questions answered

FAQ.

Do I have to leave Shopify? What happens to existing orders, customers, the Jellycat SKUs and the till?

No. Shopify stays. The rebuild is a custom Astro front end that pulls live stock, prices and checkout from the existing Shopify Storefront API, so the till, the order history, the customer accounts, the Jellycat SKUs and the gift-card balances all sit exactly where they sit today. No migration, no PCI re-scope, no "your customers need to set a new password" email. The Shopify admin is the same admin Fiona uses now; the front end just stops looking like a Dawn theme.

Do I commit to the design before any code is written?

No. The mocks in the proposal show what the rebuilt site will look like, and you sign off on the design before any production code is written. If you have brand assets, I will respect them. If you do not, you will get a coherent visual language out of the project and own it afterwards. We can also work together to get the vibe you want into the website, and I will make sure it is SEO optimised.

How does this compete against Amazon, John Lewis and the Jellycat retailer locator on Alnwick searches?

It does not compete on Amazon's budget. It competes on three things: geography (a "Jellycat stockist on Narrowgate, the corner of Alnwick Castle" anchor that beats every chain on local-intent queries), owner-led trust (Fiona is the buyer, named, visible, with the curated story on the homepage), and schema citation (Store + LocalBusiness + AggregateRating + FAQPage markup so AI assistants cite Ruby Tuesday for "gift shop Alnwick" and "Jellycat near Alnwick Castle"). Amazon wins the £8 next-day soft toy. Ruby Tuesday wins the castle visitor who wants the bigger Bashful Bunny, the Eribe Alpine sweater, and a Powellcraft dress for the granddaughter in one visit.

How long does it take and what changes for the customer on launch day?

Three to four weeks from sign-off. On launch day the URL is the same, the Shopify checkout is the same, the order history is the same, the email confirmations are the same. The homepage and the shop pages look custom, the Jellycat corner has its own landing, the About copy is on the homepage, and the structured data wins back the Alnwick search queries. Nothing in the till changes for the customer at the counter.

If the proposal lands

Reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

I take on three Northumberland builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 29 May 2026, the proposal site comes down.

See the live rebuild

A working preview you can click through.

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